Business Continuity for Small and Medium Companies

Protect your Company with an IT solution

In my last post, I mentioned that fact that today’s small and medium business owners are thinking more about business continuity since Hurricane Katrina and other recent devastating disasters. Larger companies with budgets for full time staff that design and implement business continuity plans and programs are more likely to recover from a disaster compared to the small businessman.

With the new functionality of Web 2.0, the Internet has opened up some very useful features that small and medium businesses can take advantage of to protect their business information from harm. The concept I refer to is the addition of an intranet capability for a small to medium sized business. The Intranet is basically nothing more that a “private web based” internet for a company to use as a means of internal communication, knowledge sharing, and collaboration.

The benefits of an intranet capability are numerous. First, with storage capacity reasonably priced today, it makes sense to consider an intranet solution that allows a company to save important documentation in a manner that is independent from internal computer shared drives or servers. This is accomplished by using a hosted vender that can provide the software and storage for free or at an inexpensive monthly fee. Secondly, a company that needs to capture intellectual information must have a process that allows for the free flow of ideas, best practices and “tips of their trade”. An intranet solution supports these processes by making collaboration and information sharing very easy to use.

If you search around the web, you’ll find a number of free products, to include Google’s Business Solutions that allow for document storage and a host of other free services. But if you’re like me, you may want a solution that gives you a little more security and privacy that can be easily implemented and user friendly.

There are several companies offering a hosted solution that allows a company to have a private website available that as long as you have an internet connection, you can reach the site. This is a great advantage for companies who employ staff that work from more than one location. This functionality allows employees to be independent from the email and shared files processes we are accustomed to. If you already have an investment is Microsoft software, the application I recommend is Microsoft SharePoint. In my next post we’ll explore some benefits of a SharePoint solution for your business, whether you’re a one person CEO to a staff of 100.