We recently came across an article from web hosting company 123-reg that perfectly illustrated the problems that can be caused by forgetting to do something as simple as renewing a domian name.

123-Reg reported that the GMTV website disappeared because they forgot to renew their subscription.  Technology site The Register reported that the GMTV website was briefly replaced yesterday by a page containing links to other websites. This was embarrassing but it could have been disastrous. Imagine the financial implications if this was a high volume eCommerce site!

But this is not unusual, in fact it seems that many high-profile brands lose control of their domain name and this results in a site going offline for a while. The damage can be repaired by either renewing again – if the domain is still available – or by setting up a redirect as GMTV has done. But GMTV is not alone, Emirates Airlines and Comcast have also been forgetful. It does seem incredible this keeps happening when it’s really easy to prevent. Most web hosting companies have tools to help you manage this.

Domain renewal has a small cost but a potentially huge value. The same is true for other contracts. Especially painful could be an energy contract that unexpectedly ends because there was no scheduled review. You then default to exorbitant out of contract rates and a very time consuming exercise to try to get back onto a sensible tariff.

Our advice is to always schedule pending contract reviews to make absolutely sure you do not miss any  renewals.  And our CEO Planner tool is the perfect way to avoid small surprises that could have a very big impact on your business.