IT For Your Small Business Co.

It's a sad and unfortunate situation. Small Businesses often do things that shoot themselves in the foot after they try to grow. Let's be honest. Small Businesses often don't have much in the way of ready cash most of the time. They can't usually afford to spend what they need to spend on computers early on. After they start getting a bit more income, they stick with the status quo. "If things are working, why spend money on computers or services? Things are fine right now." Small Businesses often do the easiest or simplest solution they can think of, which is usually also the cheapest, to solve the problem of the moment. For many, this means turning on Windows File Sharing on their PCs so that 2 or more computers can access the same files. Sometimes this can make your files available to users on the internet with only a short password (if one even exists) protecting your data. Customer data gets stuffed into an Access Database file for simplicity, and only one person really is able to use it at a time. Inventory is tracked by hand if at all. Hiring a new person is complicated: explaining where everything is can be awkward, complicated, and time consuming. One PC is hooked up to the internet, and 'connection sharing' is enabled, and sort of works most of the time. Or maybe a cheap home router is installed, and things are a bit more consistent. Only a couple of people have access to email, and passwords are shared. Then there's a problem with an employee, and you're not sure if they'll try to mess with your computers, or what all you need to change to keep them out.

Some of these may apply to you, some may not. These issues are certainly easy to understand. You're under time pressure to get things done, and working on your computers is taking time from doing other things. Maybe you don't have the expertise to know all of the liabilities or drawbacks from doing some of these things. For some of these issues, it doesn't really hurt anything, and can be very cost-effective. For some of these, you're open to some serious privacy or security issues. But how do you know? If some of these apply to you, are they necessarily 'wrong'? It's time for a painful question: Is your data backed up? Could you restore your data to another PC in case of disaster and keep the business running without a lot of lost time?

In general, for most of these things, the answer is no. But it IS preventing you from growing easily later on. After a while, everyone knows where everything is. It may even make sense. But is it organized? Can a new person make sense of it if you hire someone new? What about a temporary person to come in to replace someone sick for a few weeks? Would they be able to figure things out? Is it easy to set a new person up with the access they need, an email account, and help them understand where everything is? Chances are, the answers to all of these questions are a resounding 'No.'

Back to Service Descriptions Forward to Fixing those 'mistakes'