A company’s biggest nightmare, apart from losing all of their customers overnight, is that they won’t be able to carry out their operations.
Operations are the lifeblood of a company business, and with technology becoming more prominent in our everyday activities, a technology failure can be the equivalent of a company wide shut down.
It’s not a common occurrence, which is why many companies do not think to prepare themselves for a technology problem. However, problems have a funny way of showing up when you least expect them.
Technology problems, in particular, are hard to predict, because you never know when they might occur, or what kind of problem they will be. These problems aren’t easy to fix either, which can usually result in loss of customer trust or a loss in revenue, none of which are good for a business.
You might not be an expert, and to be honest, you can’t try to predict future problems when they haven’t happened yet. But by preparing yourself against common problems, you can prevent large issues from occurring and ruining all your plans.
Update Your Software
Business software is an important part of your business, no matter what industry you are in. Without it, your business won’t run as efficiently as before.
Updates to your software can fix bugs, rework some functions and provide your customers with the latest technology suitable for them.
When you don’t upgrade your software, thinking that it is “okay” as you can work just as effectively, you leave yourself open to a wide variety of risks. These are risks that could be easily avoided if you just upgraded your software.
Security is obviously the top concern, despite the fact that it might never occur to you in the lifetime of your business. Functionality, however, is something that you and your customers will notice.
Updates can fix problems when functions weren’t working as initially intended. They also patch up security holes that hackers could use to find information about you and your customers. Other software programs may only run with the latest version of your software.
You might also find that companies won’t manage or support older versions of software after a while, meaning if a problem does happen, you won’t have a company to support you.
Keep your software at the latest version, and you might find that a lot of easy problems related to software seem to disappear overnight.
Teach Your Staff
The best problems that you can prevent are ones caused by human error.
These are the problems that you can fix and actually control, in contrast to technology problems where you can’t always help what happens.
It may come as a surprise, but there are many technology problems that could be prevented if the user had more knowledge.
Educating your staff is one of the best ways to prevent technology problems from happening in the first place. Prevention is often better than the cure.
This sounds silly, but you would be surprised at the number of people who aren’t very well informed about topics such as password strength or how viruses work. You would also be surprised to learn how many people routinely choose to ignore these topics.
Your business shouldn’t be up in the hands of ignorance. Get your IT team to talk about these issues with your staff. It’s not that hard to teach people about simple things such as password safety or safe web browsing (let’s be honest, not everyone is using the Internet for work).
Even a simple training session on using the software required for the job can teach someone the skills to catch and fix simple problems on their own. Even though most companies have provided their users with help manuals and online guides, many people choose not to read them.
Don’t have your employees sitting around in the dark. Just as you wouldn’t drive a car with no lights in the night, don’t have a team who doesn’t know any better run your business.
No one is saying that you need the best and the brightest. But people are saying that if you put the time and effort into training them a bit, you will be impressed with the lack of problems.
Clean Your Technology
Everyone talks about technology nowadays in terms of its performance and its ability. What people tend to forget is that technology, like a lot of things, needs proper maintenance.
Have you ever vacuumed your house and realized how much dust has built up? Imagine a similar amount of dust building in your devices, day after day, all because you’re doing the simple thing of exposing your technology to air.
That sounds incredibly obvious and something that you have to do, but dust build up is responsible for a lot of things, such as causing overheating problems and disrupting airflow which is needed to cool a device down.
You might also be working with technology where someone has used it before and spilled a bit of food or liquid onto it. It seems harmless at first, but when you have items such as chicken or soda clogging up your keyboard or dripping liquid onto open technology, it can cause quite a bit of damage.
I wouldn’t try opening technology if you aren’t a professional, but do try and clean your technology when you can. Compressed air is known to be very good at getting dust out of a desktop computer. Subsequently, not dropping a portable device is also shown to increase device longevity.
Maintenance is just as important for technology as it is for your car. If you’re willing to do it for your car, why not your technology?
Sometimes, we can’t stop problems from happening. But if a problem happens, it is helpful to know that there is a way to keep it from becoming an even bigger headache in the future.
Keep Your IT Support Nearby
Whether you have internal IT or you outsource, your IT department can catch a lot of problems before they happen.
If a problem does occur that you aren’t sure how to handle, your department can provide the necessary support to fix the problem, and in some cases make it seem like it never happened.
Of course, many people are reluctant to admit they need help, or listen to the recommendations of their IT support because “it costs money” or “we don’t need it right now”. Occasionally, you might be right.
Maybe you actually can’t afford it, and sometimes you may not need the latest and greatest just to fix a tiny problem.
But in other cases, the amount of money you spend with your IT department is going to be less than actually dealing with the problem itself. You don’t want your employees to run into a work-related problem which leads to work not being done. You want your employees earning money.
In emergencies, you shouldn’t be handling a serious IT problem anyway. That’s what the professionals are for. If they can’t prevent it, they know how to handle it so that you aren’t stuck with a constant IT problem.
Technology Doesn’t Have To Give You A Headache
Technology, in most cases, is just a tool. Just like any tool, if you use it properly, problems should be rare and easy to solve.
If you don’t prepare for the future, you will find problems appearing in areas where you didn’t think they would be in. That wouldn’t be fun for you or your customers.
So learn the simple ways to protect yourself from future problems, and there will be smooth sailing for everyone involved.
