The importance of a back-up

I'm not sure if you have been experiencing it as well, but it's been an interesting past week with

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technology and technological challenges.  There's an old saying that things often happen in threes, and they did last week. What each experience has done for me has been to draw attention to the importance of a back up, and test out those I have in place.

Flash back one week. I was scheduled to present to an ICF chapter via webinar. For whatever reason, the tried-and-tested technology did not work as usual, keeping several participants off the line. Luckily they were able to record the call for those who could not access it. What do you have in place if people can't access you?

Next, one of my trusty bridgelines, which had been used earlier that day, went down. What could have been a challenging switch was pretty easy as I have a selection of different bridgelines available (with different service provides) at my fingertips when I do a call. What back-up bridgelines do you have? Do you have the alternative information easily accessible? Is it with different service providers - a lot of time if one service has problems, several will have problems.

Over the weekend, my main website went down, along with email. About a year ago I had made a decision to have that site design hosted on a cloud based application, so while the domain went down, I was able to get a mirrored-site up and running by the end of the day with a different host. The main site was back up again in the morning, and the time it took for that company to respond will play into the decision as to where that domain gets renewed another year. What do you have in place in case your domain goes down?

Contingency planning is key for small business owners. What steps can you take to mitigate against these blips?

With best wishes,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton, PCC, CPCC
Potentials Realized | GroupCoachingEssentials.com
(416)996-8326

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