Is your small business making these 5 technology mistakes?As a small business owner, you wear many hats. From IT director to marketing coordinator to lead accountant, your job requires you to do it all. But when it comes to technology, a lack of experience can lead to pitfalls or setbacks in your day-to-day business operations, resulting in lost revenue, downtime, or even lost data.

Today’s guest blog is courtesy of our partner Avatara LLC and their CompleteCloud Blog. Read on to learn more about the common technology mistakes that small businesses make and how to keep them from happening to you.

Failing to back up appropriately.  Not having your data backed up might seem like a rookie move, but businesses are still making this fatal mistake. If something happens to an employee’s computer with the only copy of a client project, or if your office is robbed and the backup drives are stolen, what will you do? Hopefully you’ll have your data backed up in a safe way that accounts for a range of different disaster scenarios. Ultimately, only backing up on-premise or in one location presents obvious inherent risks. Avatara utilizes state-of-the-art data centers to back up all of your data in the safest way, constantly syncing your work remotely and storing copies in multiple locations.

Failing at social networking.  With 75% of all internet users on social networking sites, you’re missing your customer by not engaging with them where they now spend so much of their time. Only a few years ago, no one could be certain how social media would impact businesses and marketing; now, the facts are clear. A quality social media campaign can bring value to a brand that simply wasn’t possible before by allowing consumers to directly engage with it. If you’re a small business with an undeveloped social media presence, this is an easy way to expand your presence with free marketing.

Slacking on security.  Security has and will continue to be a top IT concern for businesses everywhere. It’s crucial, especially when working with sensitive client information or trade secrets, to be at the forefront of top-of-the-line security protocols. Hackers, malware, viruses – it’s all out there looking to make a buck by stealing or compromising your data. Whether you’re hosting workloads on-premise in a locked storage closet or in a private cloud behind your company’s firewall, your information needs to be protected. Avatara has implemented state-of-the-art, customized security protocols for its clients, each behind unique firewalls in their own private cloud.

Poor tech support.  When something goes wrong in your IT network, the best-case scenario is a loss of productivity; the worst-case scenario is a loss of work already performed—a step backward. A strong IT foundation with qualified, professional support is essential to the health of a business in this age of technology. There’s too much on the line to not have quality, customized support whenever you need it to solve any IT problems you might encounter. Avatara offers 24/7 tech support for all of your IT needs.

Skipping on hardware upgrades.  Software companies are doing everything they can now to get their users to upgrade to the latest and greatest versions of their applications—sometimes even making old versions impossible to use. With upgrades released several times per year and the desire to stay at the forefront of the industry, dishing out cash to pay for new “direct” tools can seem like the obvious thing to do, but too often small businesses skimp out on upgrading the hardware to support the latest software or the rest of their IT needs. Blindly upgrading software while avoiding hardware upgrades could be detrimental to your IT network. Not only does Avatara refresh your equipment at no additional cost, but we also upgrade your virtual machine “hardware” remotely and frequently.
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