2009 has been a scary and emotional year for business owners. Wall Street has been on a roller coaster ride that has affected the entire economy. While banks and auto makers were getting bail out money the small business community was left to fend for itself. While some simply closed their doors, most hunkered down to ride out the storm. These small business stopped any effort to grow and minimized spending in every way they could.
Now that the shock of these traumatic events begins to wear off business are beginning to show life again. As business are starting to rebuild themselves, it is important to learn from the past. Returning to old spending habits will no longer be acceptable in this new economy. Business, especially small business, need to advance without spending money like it is going out of style. One way business can accomplish this is my making each person in their organization as productive as possible. Technology is one tool business owners have in meeting this objective. Here are 5 ways to increase your bottom line in 2010.
5. Let’s face it, data loss happens. Users delete files, over write files, systems fail ETC. Until now the only protection was to make manual copies of your files or use tapes to backup your servers/computers. Today disk based or online based backup systems significantly improve the backup of critical data.
For mobile users online backups are a game changer. If you have a laptop that moves from office, home, or business trips and much of your data resides on that machine look into online backups today! A small program that runs on the laptop can copies your files to a secure server on the internet is the best way to know that your information is protected. There are many companies providing this service today, but two popular services are Mozy and Carbonite. For companies that have lots of laptops in this situation there are services from companies like Symantc.
For small business that have servers to protect, disk based backups is something everyone should be considering. Tape technology is nearly 40 years old, and although the technology and storage capacities have improved, there are still limitations. Generally tape solutions only backup your data once per day, in most cases at night. If there is a data loss in the middle of the day only the data from the previous night is recoverable, anything created or modified that day is lost. In the case of an entire system failure tape recovery can be very slow. In some cases it can take anywhere from a day to a week to recover an entire system from tape. With disk based solutions recovery times are significantly reduced. In some cases an entire system can be recovered and users working in less than one hour. Now there is a productivity improvement that effects the bottom line!
4. The cloud is coming, the cloud is coming. The technology business is in the middle of another major evolutionary transformation. We have all gotten use to having servers that house our data. We have also learned that technology needs to be refreshed every three to five years and that refresh is expensive. Putting new technology systems in place can be one of the largest capital expenses a company has. This is where cloud computing comes in.
Cloud computing replaces the traditional server in your office with a service provided securely over the internet. Instead of spending thousands of dollars up front for that server in your office that has to have growth plans built in, cloud computing gives business the ability to pay for only the computing resources they need today on a per user basis. This change in purchasing behavior moves computing cost to a operating expense and helps with cash flow.
3. Most executives have had the ability to work remotely for years. This flexibility allows the ability to be with family and friends, but still have the ability to get work done, when ever, where ever. If you are using any kind of remote access tools today, think about the productivity gains that has meant for you and your business. Many business have not extended this ability to the rest of their staff. Would it be nice to have Joanna, your top service rep, able to get her work done without coming into the office with a cold and get others sick? What about Bill, who has that big project to finish but should be home tucking his kids into bed?
There are many ways that remote access can help business become more productive. It can also be a benefit, like health care and 401K, but this benefit does not care the expense that the other examples do.
2. Having the right communication tools is critical in today’s fast moving business world. New Unified Communication platforms enable your employees to communicate with customers, coworkers, and business partners whenever and wherever. Unified Communications include email, instant messaging, voice calling, and presence.
Email has become a staple of business over the last ten years or more. Instant Messaging has been around for years as well, but it business application has grown in recent years. Many people consider these tools to be very similar, however with the introduction of presence these powerful tools have very different uses. Email educate is that messages should be returned within an hour to a day. That’s not a very good response when a very quick question of a coworker could be answered in a matter of seconds and can delay progress of project.
With today’s Unified Communication tools, the user can tell the status or presence of their coworkers based on their calendar and other indicators. If Bob has an appointment on his calendar his status is marked as “in a meeting” and email may be the best communication choice. If he is away from the computer his status will be marked “away” so calling Bob’s cell phone might make more sense. If Bob is at his desk an simple Instant Message can get the information needed in seconds. These tools empower users and help make better decisions on how to communicate with Bob and ultimately increase user productivity.
1. All of these things sound great but without good Technology Management getting meaningful and impacting usefulness out of these tools in your business will be difficult at best. Most small business have grand plans and technology is often a part of those plans, but without someone that knows and understands business and how to map the technology to business most of these initiative often come up short.
Many small business have someone that takes care of their computer systems and fix them when they break. That might be someone in the company who’s second set of responsibilities are the computers because they just know the most about it. In other cases a consultant or company plays that role. Slightly larger companies have a person on staff that takes care of everything “technology”.
What most small business lack is that forward looking vision that will take budget and business need and make decisions educated decisions based on that information. This kind of thoughtful decision making can be the most impacting tool to the small business owner because it is what makes these other technologies come to life.
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