What is the Worst thing for your Business?

What is the Worst thing for your Business?

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After several months of off/on connections to the internet, I am finally completely without a cable connection that connects to the internet.

Carphone Warehouse, bless them, sold me a Dongle, which is how I come to be connected again. It lasts for 3 months, and that might possibly be enough to tide me over while BT are thinking about servicing my line.

It made me think of all the emergencies we need to plan for:

1. No telephone line - have had this and know I could set up a new payment plan for my pay as you go phone and configure my landline (via someone else's BT connection) to link to that.

2. No internet - Dongle - as long as no big downloads required.

3. No electricity or premises unusable - would need portable PC or could possibly decamp to friend's house with all equipment. Friends might not be too keen. Maybe rent serviced office? What have others done?

4. Burglary - keep password to online supplier handy. Maybe give to friend, just in case.

5. Staff walking out/getting ill - I don't have any now, but when I did I often thought I should have 2 part-timers, one to cover the other. What do you do?

6. Self being run over by bus - although another bigger practice covers for me, in reality I look both ways when crossing the road.

All this before being sued by clients!

What would you add?

Replies (8)

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Teignmouth
By Paul Scholes
23rd Nov 2012 17:37

Getting bored with accounts & tax

Whoops, already happened!

Think you've depressed yourself enough but how about:

IT/server packing up, have you backed up properly, does it work?

Virus (IT rather than flu);

Flood or water damage.  This is a biggie I remember years ago persuading my partner that we needed time away from the business so we went to Brighton for 2 days leaving the others to run the office (all above board, just lots of beer).  The first afternoon we called in to make sure all was OK and nobody answered, we happened to have a TV on and, on the national news, saw our hight street under several feet of water.  Yes we stayed the 2 days, only drank more beer than we should have!

On a sensible note moving your entire IT to a hosted environment gets rid of quite a bit of the above risk.

On a less sensible note, re the bus risk, wouldn't care, I'm at that time of life when I'm planning being a burden on my kids and society anyway so what the hell.

 

Thanks (1)
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By Eve 2206
23rd Nov 2012 18:09

and...

Staff not being able to get to work - strikes, snow(!), bird flu etc where they can't leave the house because a) someone's infected and they're needed at home b) they don't want to catch it; so having two part-timers won't help.

Ensuring you always have access to key documents/files - are they safely stored, copies if necessary.

Considering how long your business could survive if disaster struck, for set periods of say 24 hours, 3 days, 1 week etc - what effect would that have.

Paul's comment about moving your IT set up is useful - you can take back ups but if they're stored in your office anyway, that flood would take both I guess.

Contingency fund for replacement kit (PC, car, printers, coffee machine etc).  Insurance can take forever to settle.

 

When I moved into this house I was without a phone/internet for six weeks - I got so angry with BT I ended up begging them to help and they supplied a free dongle.  It didn't work very well though because the signal is so poor around here.  It knocked me for six and I'm just a start up. I would hate to think how it could affect an established practice.

Big firms do have reciprocal arrangements with other firms - maybe this is something sole practitioners could discuss with other local practices.

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By Moonbeam
23rd Nov 2012 21:00

I Like the Stories!

There but for the grace of etc...

Yes, I do agree that I should look into the whole IT hosting thing.

By the look of the rather large monthly invoices 2 separate clients have started paying to various IT people they are probably using this option. One of them is a 20 person company and the other is a 12 person company, so I assume there is quite a lot of data.

I presume this is hosting your data in the cloud, rather like my website is hosted at present. Any recommendations of who to speak to please?

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By imbs
23rd Nov 2012 23:25

Dropbox
My IT person has my system set up so that when I do any work on my pc, it is automatically synchronised into dropbox. My payroll and accounts software is all backed up to dropbox as well. I'd say a lot of people on here do the same.

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By Mouse house
24th Nov 2012 07:02

Hosted desktop
We use Hosted Desktop UK, worth it for the peace of mind alone, never mind the time saved on backups and installing updates etc. There was a thread on here earlier in the year

https://www.accountingweb.co.uk/anyanswers/question/hosted-desktop

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By Steve Holloway
24th Nov 2012 12:05

On-line real time file back-up ...

.... copy of all relavant passwords kept away from the house and no paper files kept anyway.

I reckon I could be up and running in about a day if the house burned down ... I am now touching wooden things for all I am worth!!

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Teignmouth
By Paul Scholes
24th Nov 2012 16:39

Hosted Desktop UK again

I've been with them since April 2011 and I'd never go back to running my own IT.  In nearly 30 years of using IT and being served by IT companies & facilities they are second to none, the support is brilliant and the switch over no pain at all.

It's actually not that difficult to understand, instead of having your pc next to you and server in the corner, your screen, keyboard & mouse are connected over the internet to a virtual PC and a server XX miles away.  All the software is loaded as you would in your place but it's just on hard disks XX miles away instead.

So my Windows screen looks exacly like my local one with Office, Iris, Internet Explorer. Start button etc etc.

Not sure if I mentioned it in the other thread but a prime driver for me was the eco side in that I probably use only 10% of the electricity I did 2 years ago by running everything via a data centre's "virtual" server.

Definately worth looking at, especially if kit is getting a bit flakey.

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By edward33
25th Nov 2012 22:15

Planning for the worst

In a previous life we had contingency plans for

1 Office being blown up

2 kidnap of staff and or partners

3 discovering terrorist links to Clients

4 Audit staff at risk due to Client location.

 

None of this now applies. No prizes for guessing which part of UK of GB and NI located

 

 

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