Category: Computer Systems

De-mystifying tablets, laptops, the ‘cloud’, smart phones, and other computer stuff.

Choosing the right technology – Not the new shiny object

There is saying that ‘Tools Follow Process not Vice Versa’. It is very tempting, but false, to think that any business problem can be solved thru the use of technology. The bright new shiny object may actually be the worst investment to make. In addition to onboarding the new technology, the users will also need education.

The starting point is to understand the users, what they are trying to do, how successful they are, as well as how they do things and the environment. Collecting web and user statistics will provide you with a solid foundation in understanding the problem space.

What happens if it all goes away?

You have spent a lot of time and effort to build a stellar online presence. What happens if something goes wrong? Can you recover your great Facebook page with a healthy set of likes? What about your followers on Twitter, or your connections on LinkedIn? Maybe you have an online store with loyal customers that suddenly went offline.

Here are some easy to follow steps to help you smoothly get back online.

  1. When you create or edit content, keep a local copy of the content and the original artwork. This allows you to quickly rebuild your online presence.
  2. Create a local, and up to date, record of your customers, likes, followers, and connections; along with profile information. When you are back online, reach out to contacts to have them re-connect.

The Importance of Having a Good Backup Strategy

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Your customers, and their information, is your most business asset. You need to have a realistic plan for backing up this information, and for recovering this information in the event of a loss.

Information about your customers can be stored in several files on different systems. Make sure that you back up each system and file in a way that you can recover and rebuild.

Some thoughts about setting the right balance of what get backed up, and how frequently:

How often do you update information about a customer, does this change depending upon how active the customer is ? Consider frequently backing up only the information that has changed, and having a longer period between full backups.

Can you afford to be out of contact with your customers for one day, one week, or one month ? It may be possible to set up a recovery process that quickly recovers key information and then brings back the rest over a short period of time.

Wikipedia has some great background reading on  planning for disaster recovery.

As always, if you have any questions or comments, please do let me know. I will be happy to help.