Poor maintenance: The cancer that eats businesses

Every morning I get out of bed, brush my teeth, take a shower and find some clean nice clothes to wear. I take time to see that my shoes are clean as well before I can step out of the house. On days when I feel my health is not at its best, I may choose to take some more rest or check with the doctor to find out what is wrong and then get treatment.Cancer is one of the worst diseases a human being may have to deal with. For treatment to work the disease has to be detected early and this calls for regular checkups even when we are feeling very healthy. In some cases, a part of your body may have to be removed (amputated) in order to save the rest of you.I am not a doctor but I have noticed that many businesses tend to go from good to bad then worse and eventually fold, thanks to poor maintenance of their facilities. While some business owners are smart enough to carry out regular maintenance of their Facilities, many others are simply interested in profits period.It is actually sad that someone who takes care of his body and probably takes his car for regular servicing could fail to appreciate the need for maintenance of his core business.A business simply can’t last if all you do is to take the profits and re-invest nothing.Take the example of hotels. How many nice hotels and lodges do we see opening with all the glitz and glamour then a few years down the road the same hotel has faded paint on the walls, the plumbing is so poor that water has to be manually taken to the bathrooms and the mattresses are too old for comfort.Then we have restaurants where each day people come in for drinks and meals that are certainly not free but then you find chairs broken, the toilets are horrible and some of the tiles on the floor are missing.It actually gets worse when you visit some of the night clubs we have in this city. You are most likely to regret a trip to the bathrooms. It is either that the toilet does not flush or the urinals are blocked and full of urine. Those wearing sandals soon realise that the floor is full of water mixed with urine and thus have nowhere to step.In the transport industry, Onatracom offers the best example of poor maintenance.The buses, donated by the Japanese, have never seen a new coat of paint apart from the advertising stickers by MTN which, in the end, made the buses uglier than before. Now many have broken down and the company is in crisis.It is, indeed, short sightedness for one to invest millions of francs into a venture then draw only profits and watch as their investment is ruined by poor maintenance. Anyone interested in the sustainability of a business must make time and money for regular maintenance.In my view, it is better to have a hotel facility closed for a few days to fix anything broken than to keep it open as the broken things gradually chase away your customers and eventually kill your business like any cancer would.