At least part of running a business requires attention to detail. Thankfully we live in a world where there’s no shortage of technological tools available to keep track of everything. With the right set of computers, networks and related tools, including portable computing and communications gadgets, we can keep our business – and our life – under control. But wait!! If you think everything is under control … Well, as the old saw goes, "… you’ve probably overlooked something!"
There are some issues to consider before you can even hope to claim a measure of control over the technology in your business (let alone your life!) It’s not just getting everything to work and play well together. One important consideration is the dependency relationship you develop with each of the tools you use and how you would function if one or more of them failed in some way. The risk of having a single failure is compounded when you consider that it’s not just you that develops the dependency. The very act of getting things to work together to enhance productivity creates a chain of dependencies within the collection of tools you use. That doesn’t even account for all of the people that depend on you and your tools and the people you depend on!
As an example, if you’ve ever suffered a loss of data because of a computer failure, you have good sense of where I’m going with this. Was all the lost data also stored on a backup? Even if it was, how long did it take to recover the failed computer? … and what did it cost? The most common answers I hear are "No," "a lot longer than I expected" and "way too much!" But everybody gripes about their computers. Let’s try another example.
Consider your cell phone and what would happen if suddenly it was unavailable to you. What’s the risk of that you ask? As it turns out, it’s quite likely – in the form of a dead battery among numerous other possibilities. But because this is a common and relatively easy to predict event, we all have solutions and practices to mitigate the risk of suffering any real harm. We consider ahead of time what we’ll do if our cell phone is unavailable. We might carefully check the power level every morning; we probably make sure we have our car charger or an extra battery; we’ve learned to make use of voice mail so we can use another phone, just in case …. If we have a plan for coping and managing the risks, we can get along fine without a cell phone for a while. If we haven’t planned, things might get a little more hectic, but we’ll probably do alright since this is after all, a comparatively simple problem.
So let’s complicate things, shall we? What if the lost tool is your Palm Pilot or other handheld computing device, aka PDA or "personal digital assistant"? What if it isn’t just a dead battery? What if it gets lost or even damaged beyond repair? Now, imagine you’re returning from a successful marketing trip or conference; where you’d entered dozens of new contacts to update your computer-based sales management system; and you had some great ideas that you jotted down in your PDA.
How much potential value did you actually create that’s now gone? How much business could you have gotten from those new contacts? Which of your ideas could have led to great products or services for customers, clients or prospects? We’re not talking about getting rid of technology tools! After all, you can just as easily lose a paper notepad. The right question should be, "What would it cost to put a backup and recovery strategy in place? When your productivity and your business is dependent on the tools you use, you need to invest enough in them to limit the risk of failure or at the very least reduce the potential business impact of a failure.
