Revamp your backup, share with customers, and new equipment plans
The fall season for making the green starts now, particularly if you’re in retail or connected in a big way to retail, which the majority of small businesses are. So let’s check out your backup, your collaboration abilities with customers and suppliers, and any new equipment you may need. Oh, and don’t worry about Windows 7 yet.
Summertime ends when the kids trudge back to school, meaning this week or next, making students and parents blue. The fall season for making green starts now, particularly if you’re in retail or connected in a big way to retail, which the majority of small businesses are. So let’s check out your backup, your collaboration abilities with customers and suppliers, and any new equipment you may need. Oh, and don’t worry about Windows 7 yet.
While about two-thirds of small businesses would never think of betting the payroll in Las Vegas, they do roll the dice with their business every day because of poor or non-existent backup systems. Dollar for dollar, I believe a good backup system is the most critical business survival tool small businesses have. Yet most studies show only about a third of small businesses have a complete backup process in place.
Let’s see whether you’re in the two-thirds of businesses tempting fate or the third with good, nay, excellent backup systems. We need to test not your backups, but your restoration processes. Remember that users never think about backup, they just beg for files to be restored now and then.
This is a two step process. Put the names of all your computers, personal and servers on small pieces of paper. Put those papers in a hat and mix them up. Pull one of those papers out and pretend that computer or server suddenly disappeared in a puff of smoke. If that computer’s a laptop, pretend it was lost or stolen, meaning any USB hard drive used for backup disappears as well.
How long does it take you to find and restore all the files from that lost computer? If two hour or less, you’re in great shape. If two days or more, you’re in really bad shape. If you don’t even know where to start the restore process, go buy some good luck charms and hope your good fortune continues.
For the second step of the process, identify which data files are most critical in your business. Put those names on a piece of paper and find your hat. Pull one out and see how long it takes to restore that file if it disappeared suddenly.
How long does it take to restore your customer information files? Your payroll files? Your Accounts Receivable? Your tax withholding files?
Unless you’re one of those rare, well prepared small businesses, you’ll need to revisit your backup systems and fix the holes. Today, cloud-based SaaS (Software As A Service) backup options exist for all sizes of businesses. Files need to be backed up locally for fast retrieval, but also remotely in case your backup system dies or gets stolen. SaaS vendors make this possible for pennies per gigabyte stored per month. You can keep rolling the dice, but remember the rule in Las Vegas: the house always wins if you keep playing long enough. Bad backups will cost you sooner or later.
Collaboration programs for use within businesses can run locally or from a SaaS vendor who hosts the application, reducing your acquisition and maintenance costs. If you don’t believe you need any internal collaborative tools, you still probably need to better coordinate with your primary customers and suppliers.
The beauty of online collaborative workspaces? Anybody can connect from anywhere. This links geographically dispersed coworkers to the same page. This also allows you to create customer and supplier workspaces so your partners can literally be on the same page with you. OK, maybe that should be virtually.
All the major online collaboration tools now allow partner and customer pages while keeping the outsiders from seeing your other information. Tired of the constant e-mails back and forth that never seem to answer questions? Let a collaborative workspace improve communication, keep an audit trail of what happens and reduce the e-mail headache.
Back in February I suggested companies forget desktops and go with laptops or workstations. That remains good advice, with the addition of perhaps choosing a netbook over a laptop. Price differences between the two have gotten rather small, but if small is important, netbooks win the portability prize. And the more online software your company uses, such as the collaborative workspaces discussed earlier, the easier it is to go netbook rather than laptop.
Netbooks seem to generate a love-hate response, especially from IT people. Normal people often love them, but IT people tend to hate them. The trick for netbooks is carefully defining what software, local or hosted, the user will be running. If that user needs number crunching horespower, a netbook is not the answer. If that user travels, does e-mail, small documents, spreadsheets and accesses applications through a browser, a netbook fits the bill perfectly. Some IT managers are far too eager to make users carry a seven pound desktop replacement laptop when a three pound netbook would do the trick. Don’t let that narrow minded IT person wear your clothes.
Choosing hardware means dealing with the Windows issue for nine out of ten of you. If Microsoft stays on schedule, and the odds look good, then Windows 7 will become the default operating system on new hardware bought after October 22nd this year. Netbooks may be an exception and keep running XP, but desktops and laptops will be Windows 7 across the board for all major hardware manufacturers.
Take the attitude of passive acceptance of Windows 7. If you buy new hardware, accept Windows 7 because that’s the least hassle for your business. But don’t start upgrading any of your existing systems until next April or so when Windows 7 gets tweaked and polished a bit more. Accept Windows 7, but don’t actively introduce it into your company other than on new hardware.
My important suggestion about operating systems is to avoid adding more Vista if possible. New computers will soon come with a free Windows 7 upgrade. Get that if you buy anything before October 22nd. And if you buy a netbook or two, Windows XP is fine. It works well on netbooks but, if you profer, there are many netbook-specific Linux operating systems available. That’s a story for another day.
