Imagine the anguish and embarrassment of losing a huge piece of work just before you were meant to be sending it to the customer. How much would it impact your bottom line if they walked away and gave the order to one of your competitors.
Perhaps the frustration of your computer not turning on is more relevant in your world; funny noises, strange messages or, even worse, nothing on the screen at all - every file on your computer completely gone with nothing left but a complete nightmare and a big expense.
Backing up computer files allows you to recover quickly when something bad happens; this is not just the obvious fire, flood or theft. Deciding what to backup is extremely personal and unique to each case; it should always include those files that cannot be easily replaced or need to be recovered quickly in the event of a loss. What would it cost your business if you were to lose product design information or your list of customers and how much they owed you? Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands?
Business is in rough waters at the moment for some and the most common advice you hear is to cut spend and save cash. You may feel apprehensive about investing in backup systems and the risk of losing everything manageable, but what about your legal obligations? We all have to follow data protection law. Other businesses have the additional red tape of The Financial Services Authority. Falling foul of these regulations put you at needless risk of heavy fines, time in prison or worse.
Perhaps losing all of your computer files is a manageable risk for the business, but what about the stress of getting yourself back up and running afterwards? You have the hassle of insurance claims and sorting out warranties with suppliers, not to mention the desperation of re-entering information back into the new computer whilst keeping the business running.
Following a hard drive crash on a laptop, a local business was quoted £4,500 by a professional data recovery outfit to get back his computer files with no guarantee of success. Now a client of ours, he has a £15 per month backup system that gives him peace of mind that his files are safe. This couldn’t happen to you, could it?
Your computer files are the most important asset within your business, so it’s absolutely critical that anything important to you is backed up regularly. Computer backups should be checked that they actually work, are stored at an off-site location and form part of a recovery plan that is tested and regularly reviewed.
There are several ways of doing a backup and it is easy to be overwhelmed by jargon and technology buzzwords If you have the slightest bit of confusion with your computer backups then seek professional advice. The investment in getting your backups right is far less than the cost of getting it wrong, and it could save more than just your business.