Technology does not guarantee you will become organised!

You need to USE the technology in order to achieve this.

For example, one thing I used to find with a paper diary was that some days I got so busy that I forgot to even look in the diary once I left home in the morning - the day seemed to take on a life of it’s own and run away with me.  I was often heard to mutter “it’s not good enough for me to write things in my diary - I have to look in it too…”

This brings me to one the my favourite features of electronic diaries and lists - the ability to set an alert on them.  I can even set multiple alerts on a single entry!

So firstly I had to get into the habit of putting every little thing into my iphone calendar and putting the appropriate alerts onto them.  Secondly I need to carry it with me at all times (an alert can only get my attention if I have the phone with me doh!)

Seems simple, but once I got into the habit of really putting everything in there I have found the tool to be absolutely incredible - if an alert goes off but my schedule has changed, I am reminded and then I can simply change the time on the item, say put it to an hour later or whatever and automatically it alerts me again at the right time.  That used to be a huge issue for me - my schedule changing during the day could cause me to totally forget things to do that I was carrying in my head.

Another fantastic feature is recurring events.

It used to be a ritual that at the end of the year I would have to go back through my old diary and begin transposing certain events into my new one - birthdays to remember, monthly meetings etc.

Now I can set an ‘all day event’ for someone’s birthday and tell the calendar to make it recur every year - I don’t have to do anything else!  I can have it alert me a week before the date even to remind me to organise a card or to meet up for coffee or whatever.

I attend a few monthly meetings and the calendar allows me to set for example the ’second Tuesday of the month’ as the meeting date and set it up for every month.  I love that then there is no chance of getting the date wrong for any month.

I use a setup for all of this too that backs all these things up onto a web site automatically (so as long as I am in range of an internet connection I get everything backed up including my contacts list), and it all synchronises with my computer as well.  One fear I had when I went to the electronic diary was a failure causing me to lose everything and my diary is critical for my business.  Now I have not 2 but 3 copies of everything electronically, so the chances of my iphone, computer and web storage all failing is very remote - less remote than the chance that I could have lost my paper diary!

Still the true key to success has not been so much the technology itself, but USING the technology - every person reading this entry probably has all the electronic management tools they need, but ARE YOU USING THEM?

Now that we have survived another flood, thankfully averted for the CBD by the levee, it’s time to review your flood evacuation plan.
Many businesses did experience major flooding and their evacuation plans were critical.
How smoothly did your plan work when it came to the crunch?

One of the hardest things about flood evacuation is the suddenness of the need to implement, and assistance from people outside your business who don’t know your plan.
Everyone feels stressed, and as it was this time, it could be in the middle of the night.
Some businesses wisely began implementing the first stage of their plan up to 24 hours before the evacuation become necessary, and this must have saved them a lot of time and stress when the full evacuation started.

Now whilst everything is fresh in your mind, review your plan as you get your business back into full operation this week.

What worked smoothly and what could be improved?

The more detail you have, including the order of the evacuation can mean that outside helpers are able to give assistance easily.
Print the plan and have several copies to allow allocating sections of the plan, and act as a checklist, so that you walk out knowing that nothing important has been forgotten.

There are some simple things that can be included in your plan to assist in protecting your technology.
Don’t forget to move electrical leads well off the floor area and unplug from power.

Implement a good backup plan. Use external or removable hard drives, easy to remove from the premises – no heavy lifting, and little space needed in a vehicle.

A simple backup system is critical for every business as many other things can go wrong with technology. Thinking of how easily you can remove your data in an emergency of any kind can take a lot of pressure off the evacuation procedure.

Use the links on this site to read more about backing up your computer systems.

Well wouldn’t you know things always go this way.

After writing about backing up in the past week I had an interesting experience last week.

One morning, in a rush of course, I wanted to print something and the printer was not plugged into the electricity.
So I grabbed the lead, plugged it in and sparks went flying everywhere.
There was moment of sheer terror, but no, my computer (also plugged into the same power board) was fine.

Fortunately I have a UPS (uninterruptible power supply) and that saved all my equipment as it still managed to blow a house fuse.

It sure reminded me of the importance of back up - a disaster can happen that quickly!

Wouldn’t I have been embarrassed if I had caused a major data loss by not having a backup if it had blown out my computer!

I’m so pleased to be able to report that all is well in BITTS, no damage, no data loss and back ups in place.

Backup is a secondary copy of computer files that stored outside of your working computer system.
This backup can be in many different forms, CD DVD, External Hard Drives, or websites depending on the amount and type of data in your business.
Data is all information saved in files on your computer system. This could be photos, emails, financial files and even your business plans.
One of the first lessons you learn about backing up your data is when you have a hard drive crash… or worst still your laptop or pc stolen.

Often businesses panic and start a back up procedure that is doomed to fail. Simple things like too many copies of files with no real meaning to the naming, to many different versions of the same version or too many people trying to backup the same information. A structured plan that suits your business is of up most importance… if not today but sometime in the future afterall your leaving your business in the hands of computer…
The second lesson is when you have started a backing up routine and the your hard drive crashes. At this stage your feeling really pleased that you have a backup only to find that the backup is corrupted or incomplete.
A couple of rules regarding backups:
1. Have a backup
2. Verify the backup is valid and complete. This may involve a planned recovery test.
3. Backup your data in several different mediums (DVD or External Hard drive) and in different locations. No sense having all your data backed up and in the same location if the building burns down.
4. Choose the method that suits your business. It may well be a simple as a DVD Burn every close of business through to Online remote continuous backup supported by “duplicated sites”.
5. File management throughout your business should be a high priority and constantly monitored. Centralised file management makes complete business data backup easier and generally more robust in the event requiring a full recovery to restore your information.
A lot of large scale commercial websites now offer online backup for a fee, but this still leaves the question if that site goes bankrupt or just vanishes so does your data. This thinking goes back to point 3 above have your data in different formats and locations… just think of the worst case scenario and then plan from there!
The following scenarios illustrate the need for backup in businesses.
* In 1997, during a fire at the headquarters of Credit Lyonnais, a major bank in Paris, system administrators ran into the burning building to rescue backup tapes because they didn’t have offsite copies. Crucial bank archives and computer data were lost.
* Privacy Rights Clearinghouse has documented 16 instances of stolen or lost backup tapes (among major organizations) in 2005 & 2006. Affected organizations included Bank of America, Ameritrade, Citigroup, and Time Warner.
* On 3 January 2008, an email server crashed at TeliaSonera, a major Nordic telecom company and internet service provider. It was subsequently discovered that the last serviceable backup set was from 15 December 2007. Three hundred thousand customer email accounts were affected.
These examples are from Wikipedia and you view the full entry on backups there.
BITTS provide information management consultancy services to businesses and can assist to formulate a robust backup plan.

If I had a dollar for every time someone has said to me “Computers were supposed to make my life easier … “ I’d be a millionaire now several times over!

This weekly column will explore, demystify and simplify issues and jargon associated with using technology effectively in your business.

Technology is moving so fast we can barely keep up with what we have, what we don’t have or what we should have.

Some of this jargon we hear around the traps include VOIP, BLOG, WIFI, Bluetooth, BluRay, Jump drives, back up, ADSL Broadband, RSS, Podcast, Streaming, Moodle and Wiki just to name a few.

When we hear these things we wonder if this technology can help our business? We can ask a ‘techie’ and get bamboozled by their answers, “google” and find ourselves lost in cyberspace and more confused than when we started, or ask the neighbours teenager only to find ourselves well versed in music downloads and sharing but none the wiser for our business!

Not understanding technology can however end up causing us thousands of dollars. For example back up is often talked about but is it a key function in your day to day business? Recently a client had a single laptop computer that was used as the primary business records tool. The hard drive crashed without warning leaving him stranded with everything gone. He was referred a data recovery specialist and his data was recovered, but at a cost of $3000. This could have been avoided at an outlay of only a few hundred dollars and a daily back up routine.

Feel free to leave feedback, your experiences and questions here by adding a comment to this entry.
Please leave your name and your email if you wish us to contact you further.

Katrina Sommers