When an individual makes a decision to leap into the role of entrepreneur, there are a lot of resources available to help them. These resources help them figure out everything from how to write a business plan, to where to buy the business license and how to pay employees. All of these are obviously crucial to the smooth running of any small business. Imagine this though, you get your license, you set up shop, you hire employees or initially run your business on your own. You're there! You're a small business owner. You have customers, you're getting paid. Then, one night something happens.
Scenario 1: You're sitting on your sofa, sending a note to a friend about the YouTube video you just watched and your PC shuts down. You don't panic because it's happened before and you were able to do that golden command, "REBOOT", and everything came back. You were never sure about why it shutdown, but hey, as long as you got it back. Right?
Only this time, your pc won't come back up.
What are you going to do? Oh wait, your wife has a pc that you can use tomorrow. Only, your accounting software isn't loaded on her pc. Ok, so you won't be able to process customer billing. You can do that by-hand if needed. Oh, but your portal to your bank is registered on that pc and its payday. You always issue your payroll checks first thing in the morning so your employees can run to their banks at lunchtime. Remember thinking you should write that website information down somewhere?
Scenario 2: You're sitting on your sofa, sending a note to a friend about the odd pictures you just got from him via email and your PC shuts down. You don't panic because it's happened before and you were able to do that golden command, "REBOOT", and everything came back. You were never sure about why it shutdown, but hey, as long as you got it back. Right?
Only this time, your pc starts up but lines and lines of stuff roll across the screen and then your screen is blank, except for a single blinking cursor in the upper left hand corner. This doesn't look promising. Well, not a huge big deal, you use this pc to send business communications and customer information, nothing you have to have the next day. Of course, all of your personal information is on the pc because it didn't make sense to buy a pc specifically for business when you could use your personal one. You keep your banking and credit card information and in a special text file that no one would ever guess the name of, you keep your account information and passwords loaded. How else would you remember all of those passwords?
Scenario 3: You're shutting down the shop pc for the night, running the reports from your online customer reports when a message pops up on your screen informing you that you don't have virus protection for your pc and asks if you want to install it. How nice? "Someone" is worried because you don't have virus protection. You know you bought that though. It should be working. What was going on? Well, you might as well buy this new one from whoever this is. You put in your credit card information, the page says HTTPS so you know it's safe, and wait. And wait… And wait… Maybe you have to reboot. The reboot seems to take FOREVVVVEEEERRRR. Then, nothing.
So, what do you do? You're not a pc expert. You bought your machine at one of the local retail electronics stores, maybe you can take it back there first thing tomorrow morning and they can fix it.
So what does this have to do with Small Business Owners and what they leave out of their plans? 3 out of 5 Small Business Owners forget to include technology and business continuity in their plans.
There are a lot of considerations related to technology and business continuity for which small business owners are not prepared, because they are issues they've never had to deal with before. So the question arises, what SHOULD be included?
- PC Protection
- Data Protection
- Environment Protection
- Device Protection
Forgetting or underestimating any of the above can hurt a small business owner's reputation and credibility. Many small business owners go into business with excellent business plans as far as market research, understanding how to fill out all the proper forms but what about technology? What about security? And what about business continuity?
Part 2 to come next week.
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