Businesses deal with all types of problems, and some of them are really serious. Some situations aren’t even problems…yet. When risk is all around you, how can you know when enough is just enough? In today’s blog, we will provide you with some answers to how to flip potential problems into opportunities using technology.
Small Businesses and Handling Risk
Risk is the potential for something negative to happen. Businesses, as a rule, are always under a certain amount of risk from lack of demand or some type of catastrophe happening (data breaches, disasters, regulatory troubles, or even irreversible damage to organizational reputation among them) that puts their business in jeopardy. This is precisely why businesses create comprehensive business continuity plans that contain contingencies meant to confront situations when risk becomes reality.
Many small businesses aren’t great at identifying legitimate risk; and, while they aren’t under as much risk as larger companies, there are plenty of situations where a reluctance to identify risk could cause major problems. All you need to do is look at how many businesses lacked proper contingencies to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic and how many of them closed or lost large portions of their revenue. Obviously, this is an extremely unfortunate event that many didn’t take seriously until government mandates came down and they had to react on the fly. Some businesses were able to, some weren’t.
How Much Risk is Acceptable?
It really depends on your business. For insurance companies, risk means revenue. For a small boutique or restaurant, risk can literally sink your business overnight. Being able to identify what situations could sink your business is important to sustaining your business. There is a figurative graveyard of businesses that didn’t identify potential risks, or took on too many obvious ones, and met gristly ends. For this reason, you need to be able to identify risks.
Due to the pervasive nature of technology inside of your business, it carries with it a bunch of risk. Let’s take a look at some of the most common risks a business has when it comes to its technology.
Data Breaches
Data breaches can be terrible for any business, but they can be an end game for the small business. Doing what you can to keep your data and infrastructure safe is important. This includes outfitting your technology with the resources to protect it such as an antivirus, access control, and two-factor authentication; and, identifying where training is needed (especially dealing with phishing).
Lack of Comprehensive IT Support
For businesses that depend on technology—and that is most of them—not having proactive support for your technology can lead to you dealing with a bunch of downtime, which is extraordinarily expensive. Having trustworthy and competent people looking after the reliability of your technology is the best way to avoid downtime and keep your business running smoothly.
Employee Mistakes
Technology (especially business software) can get complicated, and sometimes—in the fury of doing business—employees can make mistakes. They are less apt to make those mistakes if they are well trained. In order to improve organizational productivity and efficiency, you will want to invest time and resources in training your staff.
That’s only three of the multitude of risks that a business faces, but if you are looking for help navigating business technology, we can help. To learn more, give us a call today at (212) 796-6061.