Jeff Liebermann wrote:
On Mon, 14 May 2012 06:01:24 +0000 (UTC), Cydrome Leader
wrote:

This math is as nonsense as those "calculators" from places that do
backups and datarecovery where you type in numbers and they claim you lose
10% of your annual revenue per minute your computers are down or whatever.

That might be a stretch, but the real numbers are fairly close. If
the sales organization can't take orders for a day, that business will
probably go to their competition. Assuming 7x24 or about 350 working
days per year, the loss of one day sales is 1/350 the of the gross, or
about 0.3% The actual losses will be higher due to repair/recovery
costs, overtime to recover, and loss of reputation. The last is
fairly significant. I know of one shopping web site that went dark
for only about 3 hours. However, there was a dramatic drop in
subsequent sales for about a month due to rumors that the company had
gone out of business because their web site was down. My guess is
about 1% overall loss for a days downtime.

this would sound more reasonable, but it all depends on what the business
does. Airlines barely function when their computers are running, shut them
all off and they they just don't work at all.

If your business is a tuckpointing company, it's doubyful you'd even know
if your own website was down.

The only way it costs $75 to ship a box is if you factor in your 100
million dollar failed SAP installation as part of your "billing costS" or
whatever, and then blame the box for the expense.

I don't think anyone would be interested in my 30 year old
calculations. Also, I can't disclose number for current customers
because of confidentiality requirements. Sorry(tm).

Perhaps the 16GB iPhone 4S would be a suitable example. It costs
about $200 to manufacture, but sells retail for $500 from various
vendors, or $650 from Verizon. Using the $500 sales price, the cost
of shipping an empty iphone box is:
$500 - $200 = $300
The $300 pays for everything EXCEPT the product. For Verizon, 3.25
times cost is rather low for electronics. 4.0 to 4.5 times cost is
more typical.

this has to be a joke. If you're not from NASA, it's got to be lehman
brothers, enron or arthur anderson to say with a straight face that it
costs $300 to ship an iphone because the retail price is $500 and the
phone costs $200 to make.