When It All Stops Working...
Posted On: 2011-01-31
... what do you do?
I’m old enough to remember a time when computers weren’t the major tool that they have become today for most businesses. Back then if you wanted to contact someone you picked up the phone and if you wanted to send them information you wrote them a letter.
Of course today you email them, send them an @ on Twitter or even write something on their Facebook wall. But what happens when it all stops working? What do you do when all the modern technology that we have at our disposal just stops working in the way it should?
We’ve become rather dependant on modern technology haven’t we? We fire off emails and get replies in a matter of minutes ... we send someone a text on our cell phone and get an almost immediate response. We expect it ... we rely on it ... we build our business around the fact that we can get instant responses and instant access and when it doesn’t happen what do we do?
I only ask because right now I can’t send an attachment to anyone. Sure I can send emails ... I can receive emails too but my anti-virus program ... which happens to be right up to date ... is telling me that it’s database is obsolete and it can’t download a fresh database or repair itself either.
Somehow that problem has also impacted on the attachments I want to send and it has also stopped TweetDeck from downloading any updates.
Frankly it’s frustrating and very annoying and it’s holding up my work. It reached the point a little while ago where I had to save some files to a flash drive and then jump in the car and drive round to a client’s place so they could get the files that I needed to send to them and that they needed to see as soon as possible.
And of course now I have to either wait to see if the problem with my anti-virus program was caused by a bad update from the anti-virus provider or is an indicator that I need to reinstall the anti-virus program. If it was caused by a bad update then hopefully the next update will fix the problem but I dread to think that I might have to stop what I’m doing and go the reinstall route.
That would be something of a blow because I really don’t have the time to stop what I’m doing and spend time reinstalling something that should be working perfectly.
And right there is the problem for anyone who uses a computer ... especially for business. We become accustomed to things working without a glitch ... we build our business around computers and the Internet with the expectation that they will always be there and they will always work.
We don’t allow for any downtime and we don’t build any downtime into the projects that we take on for others because our experience is that everything works ... and goes on working. Even if there’s a fault or a problem we can find workarounds that allow us to continue on with the task in hand.
But what if there is a fault ... what if a problem arises and there are no workarounds? What if things just stop and stay stopped all day or even for a few days?
What would you do to keep your business going? Regardless of whether you’re a content provider or an affiliate marketer if your access to the Internet disappears ... for whatever reason ... you’re going to start missing deadlines and that will cost you money both immediately and into the future.
So what would you do if that was to happen to you?
We live and work in an industry where everything seems to work faultlessly ... until it stops working ... and then there are so many variables that finding and fixing the problem can take a lot of time. So when things stop working how will you survive?
There’s no standard answer that I can give you. With so many variables it’s impossible to provide an answer that covers everything. But if you want to survive then you do need answers ... you need plans that you can quickly pull out and put into action.
You need to look at every aspect of your business and identify what can go wrong and plan what you have to do to overcome the problem if those things that can go wrong do go wrong.
You need to be on top of the problem instantly ... not in a few hours time when you’ve thought of a solution.
I’ve done my planning and the solution is in place and it will work just fine till the issue with my anti-virus program is fixed. But what about you?