Never has a landscape changed as rapidly as the current technological environment for businesses – and no Strata Manager can afford to be left trailing behind. As the National Technology Partner of the SCA we are constantly assessing the technological health of the sector and are surprised to find how often business owners are overlooking the basics. In our experience these are the top five technology risks in industry.
1. Inadequate Data Backups – Every year we see many examples of companies needing to rely on backups and finding out they don’t work or were not recent enough. Backups are only potentially as good as the last time they were tested. Recovery from backup should be tested on a frequent basis to provide comfort that you can actually rely on them when your business experiences a failure.
2. Old or Inconsistent Hardware and Software – The majority of technology issues we see in business are caused by old or inconsistent hardware and software. While delaying upgrades may save money in the short term, it almost always costs more in support and downtime. Research by Tech Aisle indicates that the cost of maintaining newer PCs can be as much as 150 percent lower than maintaining older ones.*
3. Inadequate Power Protection – This area of risk is often neglected in all but larger businesses. With current weather calamities becoming more frequent we have seen plenty of outages caused by power spikes or complete losses of power. Properly installed UPS (uninterruptable power supply) and surge suppressors can help eliminate or at least minimise the risk of downtime or data loss. Where a loss of power occurs, this affords you the time to gracefully shutdown servers and PCs to avoid data corruption.
4. Weak Tech Support – Every business has to start somewhere and often we start out as our own IT department managing a couple of PCs or notebooks.
As business grows we might engage a local contractor as required or even rely on a retail store for advice and support. However, at some point most businesses outgrow adhoc IT support and need proactive, IT professionals that can outline strategies to support their business and more importantly protect it from a range of critical risks.
5. Insufficient Training – Aside from being a major contributor to staff attrition, insufficient training causes the majority of user errors in software applications today. Furthermore, this greatly undermines overall productivity and efficiency to Strata Businesses. Take advantage of any and all avenues you can to up-skill staff, the efforts will reap rewards.
If you are looking for advice in any of these areas please feel free to contact Daniel Borin at StrataMax on 1800 656 368 or visit www.stratamax.com.
* Tech Aisle. SMB Whitepaper: “The Case for Buying Modern PCs.” (March 2010.)
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