Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Back up your data

Our power went out, apparently around 1am and obviously no computer. Area wide - 17,000 knocked out including my son's school so he's off today. Power company's message was all power restored by late tonight.

As luck would have it we just got power back now - and I was on my way out the door. I have everything stored online - all of my prospect spreadsheets, appointments, documents and obviously I can run quotes online.

If you use a desktop CRM to store all of your client and prospect data you're ass out if the power fails and really ass out if you crash unless you backed up your data.

Now, without anything being online - what if I had an appointment this morning with all my client's info - name, number, address, etc...stored on my desktop? I'm screwed. However, I can pick up my cell and call anyone to access my appointment calendar to get the info I need - then drive over one of my friend's or family's home and get to work - really not skip a beat.

Flash drives are fine but useless if the power's out - you'd have to drive somewhere. They're also useless if they melt in a fire. Pure preservation of client and prospect data is online storage. Everything I update gets stored online before I wrap it up for the day.

I personally use upload all my Excel and Word docs to Google but there's a ton of online storage places - including Zoho. I use the Google calendar for all of my appointments.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Is your blog also with Google? (you mentioned in this post that you save Excel and Word docs with them). I realize it seems obvious, but had to clarify. Thanks again.