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Often quoted as a joke, it is a fact of life that unexpected things happen all the time. If you own a small business this rings especially true. The question should not always be "What could happen?", because the real question is "What will we do to recover if something happens?" There are a few areas of your business you can focus on right now to make sure that an unforseen event does not expose fatal flaws in your oprations, plans and procedures. Think about what you would do if, for example, you needed to get copies of all the documents a client has ever e-mailed to you. How the documents got lost, or how you lost access to them is not important. You need to get to those documents and you need to do it quickly.
How long are you prepared to wait to get documents out of storage? How many hours can you stop what you are doing and rummage through files looking for printed versions, or wait for your IT people to restore a backup?
Not just cash reserves, to survive an interruption in cash flow, but also backup plans for electricity and water supply. Your business should be able to operate without relying too heavily on any one supplier. Explore new ways to make your business more independant. Business plans can also be kept in reserve. a Change in your day-to-day priorities can open the way to explore new and exciting business operations. Look at how many people jumped at the chance to make and supply personal protective equipment (PPE) and fashionable masks for ordinary folks.
You should also be careful of your clients being grouped together in one industry. Even worse, you could have one or two clients who supply the bulk of your turnover.
Keep a list of ideas. Keep a list of people you can reach out to and talk to about business opportunities. Keep your mind open and investigate business opportunities as they present themselves.
It is a proven fact that diversity in the workplace results in higher productivity and many other benefits. In this case I am referring to diversity in customers, diversity in business operations and diversity in suppliers. Make sure your business is focused enough to excel, but also diverse enough to survive a down turn in one or more industries. This balance is difficult to achieve. The rewards are worthwhile, because even when there are no worldwide catastrophies, a diverse business can thrive during seasonal and other cyclic changes.
Try and build businesses "around" your business. If you are a plumber, you can start buying and renovating properties. That will teach you about the real estate industry. You can start selling plumbing supplies to other plumbers and that will teach you lessons about retail.
This is where IGotAfrica can help your business. Make sure your e-mail services, web site, documents and all your other digital assets are highly available. Digitise as many of your physical assets as possible. A detailed asset register that gets submitted to your insurance provider is a good idea when photographing and cataloging your assets seem over the top.
Our cloud based hosting solutions means that your data hosted with us is highly available. What does that mean? It means there would need to be multiple failures in many different geographic locations before your data would need to be restored from backups. This is also referred to as the "multi site" backup strategy. This applies to our web site hosting environment, e-mail environment and document storage.
Here are some of the services we provide that can help your business adjust quickly to bad times and good times:
E-mail Hosting
We offer reliable and affordable e-mail hosting options. Our cloud based e-mail solutions can compete with all the big players on the market. We can also offer hosted solutions with Office365 and Google for Business. Click here to find out more.
DNS Hosting
The backbone of the internet is the Domain Name System (DNS). We can offer robust and affordable DNS services to accommodate any of your requirements. If your DNS services go down, your entire online presence is at risk. Click here for more information.
Web Site Hosting
Make sure your business is available at all times with the tap of a finger or a click of a mouse. Fast and robust, we can host any size site with horizontal and vertical scalability. Click here for more information.
Web Site Design and Development
Your business needs to be presented on the screens of billions of people. We build affordable web sites as well as top of the line custom web based software solutions. See our options here.
Cloud Hosting
The best technology available in the world today is available to your business. Make sure your site is robust and resilient to failures, guaranteed. More information here.
Dedicated Server Hosting
Don't like to share? Nobody really does. Get your own g=hardware that is dedicated to your business. We build you your own resiliant cloud solution with multiple backup strategies according to your needs and budget. We offer Managed Dedicated Servers, for customers who have no technical resources available, as well as Unmanaged Dedicated Servers.
Online Advertising
Prepare for whatever may come by building your business. We can design and run comprehensive above and below the line advertising campaigns that fits your budget and your target audience. Contact us today to get started.
