One of the most disastrous things that can happen to your business, is losing all of your data.
No longer able to access your customer database, your sales records, your inventory, your images and files, could potentially ruin your retail store. In the least, it would set you back weeks, trying to recover all of the lost information, and the lost sales that would happen as a result.
I know businesses that have lost thousands of dollars in lost sales, when their website has been hacked, others that have lost tens of thousands of dollars in lost time, and not to mention, the potential legal issues that can arise, when you don’t have access to your business files.
We’re talking about your point of sale system, your website, client information, internal files, employee data, bookkeeping files, images and blog posts, all gone.
What would that do to your business?
And yet, the answer to fix all of this is relatively simple and inexpensive. It just takes a bit of time to set it all up, and then it will automatically run in the background.
So what am I talking about? Backing up your data to the cloud.
Having an offsite, secure server, where all of your information is help, and can be accessed anywhere, should you need to restore your system.
Check with your point of sales system provider, to see if they have an automatic backup, and how you access it if there is an issue.
Put your staff files on an intranet, such as google sites.
Back up all of your computers and your server, if you have one.
The biggest place I see business owners overlooking, is backing up, their own laptops. Most cloud based storage can run a backup for you over night, ensuring that all of your personal information is not lost.
Now that your information is ready to retrieve, check your internet security. Ensure your software is up to date, your website is updated to it’s latest version and any security patches have been installed.
This is one of those things that just gets lost in the day to day running of the business, and it doesn’t seem important, until the worst happens, and you’re faced with potential losses.
So taking a few hours out, to put these systems in place, could save you tens of thousands of dollars in the long run