Almost every business in the current age incorporates the use of IT in their daily activities. Without the use of this technology these businesses would find it almost impossible to carry out their commercial activities. This dependency on IT is often unintentionally neglected, because core business activities divert the focus away from maintenance and backups. Unfortunately is not until the IT infrastructure fails that this IT dependency becomes obvious, and in some cases it is too late to recover, causing massive disruption and loss of revenue.
Actions can be taken to prevent this situation from happening. Be it an in-house or out-sourced solution. your business is not short of options. These can vary depending on the available budget, however it is possible to keep costs to a minimum and still be prepared for the worst; this can be achieved by an employee who takes responsibility for maintaining the IT and requesting professional help for the most complicated tasks, or these services could be outsourced to a professional.
The core uses of IT in most businesses are file collaboration and email communications. Lets have a look at these individually.
A lot of important decisions and agreements are made by email, thus having accurate records and having the capacity to refer to previous emails is extremely important. Emails can either be hosted on a local server in the office, or by a third party service provider. It’s very important that mailboxes are archived and backed up frequently and that these backups are verified on a regular basis to ensure that the data will be available when required.
- File collaboration
Files are often required to be seen and edited by more than one employee; unless these files are kept in a central location accessible to all, it is hard to keep track of which is the latest version of a document, thus storing all files in a central location is a positive step to improve efficiency. More importantly, these files contain essential business information that cannot be lost, therefore, performing regular backups of the file repository is a must. t These backups should be verified frequently to ensure the important data is indeed stored for future use, and offline copies of the backups should be in place, as these will ensure that data can be restored in case of a major disaster, e.g. fire, theft, etc…
Whatever the case, it is of the utmost importance that the IT infrastructure is not overlooked and that the correct strategy and policies are in place, no matter how small this IT infrastructure may be.
More about positive steps to maximise the use of IT within the business environment will be published in this space, these articles will be focused on specific topics.
Abe Prieto
