The holiday’s booked, passport in hand, you’re ready to go. Two weeks in Torremolinos – here we come; desk is clear, everything’s covered, well- you’ve told them how to change the backup tapes, where they’re kept even! What could possibly go wrong, what does it matter, you’re mobile won’t work anyway – bliss!
"Where's my bl**dy e mail?"
Meanwhile…. back at the ranch. Monday morning, no e-mail – what do they check? Where do they start?
All too real for a lot of small businesses, there unfolds a sequence of events that are both costly and incredibly time consuming on an already overstretched workforce. This is sometimes the very real effect of the “holiday period”.
It’s quite often only during this period that a company finds out that their office IT has been hanging together by a thread, there’s no documentation and it’s no wonder the IT guy skulks around looking stressed – he’s carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders!
Try it for yourself
If you think this couldn’t happen in your company try a simple test, delete someone’s e-mail, maybe someone who’s really annoyed you that day! Then see if you can get it back without any help from the IT guy.
The Reactive Option
Although our pricing in these situations is more palatable than our competitors (whose call out charges would get you Julia Roberts for a fortnight and then hourly rates that would get you her mother too), we are still realistic enough to know that walking into a scenario where nobody knows anything is going to take some time to resolve. Time equals money.
The Proactive Option
A network audit and properly kept documentation would prove invaluable at this time. It’s a very simple exercise and can take anything from a few hours to a few days depending on what state it’s in to start with.
Simple things like who provides the Internet link, what the account number is and that wretched password thing that BT do – yes, you know the one “what’s the name of your first pet?” Great if the person who subscribed to it is still around – not much good if they left two years ago and you’re left like me shouting at some brainless halfwit “I don’t know, Lassie”
Failing a full system audit, a simple checklist can be provided so that in the event that you let your IT guy see daylight once a year, you’re not left in the dark.
Call us in before you have the headaches and we can help identify those areas that could be potential showstoppers and do something about it.
Now, where did I put that passport….
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PSU regularly undertake network audits for their customers to avoid such nightmare situations. Read more about it here.
