Technical Failures Can Affect Home Businesses

“Your server is down.  The electricity is off.  Your computer has a glitch,” are all announcements we dread to hear if our home business depends on today’s technology.

All of these occurred in our household recently, in addition to b5media having some downtime.  So occasionally my blog posts were rather irratic in April.

A friend in another state, who also conducts business utilizing the Internet, had server and computer glitches this past week, too.  “It made me realize how much we depend on technology for business these days, ” she remarked.

*If you depend on the Internet for receiving or placing orders, it can mean loss of business.

*Viewers who visit your site and find it down/inaccessible may not return or take awhile before visiting again.

*If you post online at a site or blog, your material may not be so frequent.

*In a world where editors, print and online ones, want your material sent via e-mail, as mine do, having technical problems can mean delays or missing deadlines.

 *If your banking and bookkeeping are done online, there can be problems without technical access.

Solutions? 

*Try to have phone numbers you can call when your computer and related technical support is down.  In some cases, you can conduct your business via phone and fax.  You, at least, can let necessary contacts know what’s going on.

*When things are up and running, inform those necessary what’s been going on.

*Have a back-up computer in case one doesn’t work.  (We’ve found this necessary in our household.)

*Realize business downtime isn’t a challenge solely for Internet related and home businesses.  Traditional businesses experience downtime, slow times, loss of customers when weather and natural disasters occur…as happened twice in one week in our area (New England in the US) recently with first a blizzard, then rain storm with high winds.