Summer is winding down, and that can only mean one thing- business is going to pick up. So, what does “back to business” mean for you, and especially, for your IT system?
1. Slow Internet
Kids are out of camp and getting ready to go back to school, families are back from vacations, and people are going to start spending more time indoors. Meaning- more people are going to be online at one time. If your business doesn’t have an internet services in place that can handle this, you are going to experience the pains.
Make sure that you have a high-speed connection, and that you allow of a lot of bandwidth space. Both of these factors will help your internet run as fast as possible. Also, make sure you have a failover system in place- meaning that you need to get a second internet connection (from a different provider) that you can switch over to if something should happen to the main connection.
2. Slow computer
Work picking up means more data on your computer- more documents, spreadsheets, plus you are probably going to have to start working on more things at one time (those lazy days of summer are over). All of these factors contribute to your computer running slower.
To avoid this, spend time now making sure your computer is as clean as possible. Work with your IT professional to make sure any unnecessary programs are deleted from your computer, and make sure you defragment your hard drive to increase efficiency.
3. Full Email
This is another issue that can be brought on by the sudden return of many people to work. Your email might suddenly start flooding with new messages. And not just important ones- spam email is going to start picking up too. Now that summer is drawing to a close, businesses are starting to pick up their advertising again, which means you can count on more newsletters and spam ads in your inbox. If your email gets full, you might end up missing important messages.
There are two ways to help prevent this. The first one is to work with your IT professional and make sure that your email is cleaned up as much as possible. Archive everything you can, and try and sort all of your messages into different folders. This will help free up space in your inbox. The second one is to make sure you have a good spam filter in place. Take some time to check on the filter settings, to make sure that it will block as much spam email as possible, and double check that important email addresses are whitelisted.
4. Weather
Those warm (sometimes too hot) summer days are dwindling, and now come the weather changes. Bad storms, drastic temperature changes, and unforeseen climate conditions can all have a negative impact on your computer equipment.
If you have a server room, or a place where you store your IT network devices, make sure it is temperature-controlled. You don’t want it to get too hot or too cold- generally speaking it should be a little below room temperature. And make sure you can control the temperature in there independently. You are probably going to be switching back and forth between heat and air conditioning in the months to come, and those temperature changes can damage your equipment. That room needs to stay at the same temperature.
Also, make sure you have a good backup system in place and that all employees are clear on how to use it (how to save documents in the shared drives, etc.). In fact, it’s probably a good idea to have a refresher workshop for your company about your backup system. If something happens that causes your system to go down- even something small like a power surge, you want to make sure your backups are in the best shape possible.
Getting back into the swing of things after the summer months can be difficult, and it is usually a very busy time for companies. So, before that end of summer swing gets into full gear, take some time now, work with your IT professional, and make sure that you are ready for it. The last thing you need in the upcoming months is to add “IT problems” to your list.
What else do you think you can do to get your business (and IT) ready for the fall? Let us know in the comments!