10 tech health checks for your business

1 How to smoothly upgrade your old work laptop

People put off upgrading to a modern, fast, secure laptop because of the hassle factor in moving files and documents. “I know where everything is on my current machine” is a common refrain. But you’re risking a breakdown if you keep using an old machine, especially one over five years of age.

Transferring files is now much more easily done than in the past.

A few downloadable services can do the heavy lifting, making sure that all your old files (and many of your programs or applications) are copied from one PC to another. They’ll even keep the same user profile and locations so everything seems familiar.

Laplink’s PCMover (laplink.com/pcmover) is one such option, starting at €23.95. However, like other such programs, this is done through a web link, so you’ll need a reasonably good broadband connection.

If you don’t want to spend money but just want to save some files, you can use one of the many free online storage services such as Dropbox or Onedrive. (Google Photos and Flickr give you almost unlimited free space for photos and videos, if that’s a sticking point.)

2 Update your IT security processes and make sure you have proper back-ups

In the last two months, separate waves of ransomware attacks have pillaged IT systems across Europe.

One of them, Wannacry, badly hit vulnerable institutions, such as hospitals and schools.

As a rule of thumb, the more up to date your IT systems are (newest operating system, recently checked security software, ‘two factor’ authentication for sensitive password-protected information), the better equipped you are to deal with such threats. But it’s critical to have a working, up-to-date backups of the data you can’t afford to lose. This isn’t that hard to do.

Online back-up and recovery services, such as Iron Mountain or Keep It Safe, perform a lot of the heavy lifting and are aimed at small businesses. If you’re a sole trader, alternatives such as Crashplan.com are an effective, user-friendly alternative.

3 Switching to a paperless office is doable for small firms

A switch to more paperless methods is easier to do than before and can pay off in less time wasted shuffling and filing paper documents. Docusign and other ‘digital signature’ software have full legal effect in most business transactions and there is a growing number of small firms that will accept such signatures. Even legal firms, considered the worst offenders for clinging to paper systems, are now doing it. “We don’t send physical letters. We simply send everything by PDF or by email,” says Larry Fenelon, managing partner of Dublin-based Leman Solicitors, which has under 40 staff.

“If we receive physical correspondence, we datestamp it, scan it and then it goes into an online intray, where it gets named, dated and assigned to a file. Docusign is a great tool.”

4 Clean out or update your accounts, both online and telecom

According to the most recent Comreg figures, there are still 3,000 active dial-up internet services and well over 100,000 active ISDN lines in Ireland. Many of these are legacy connections that businesses still have going.

Some may connect devices payment terminals but others are simply overlooked, hiding in the morass of monthly bills that business managers pay without sufficient scrutiny.

Similarly, it’s time to review which online accounts you’re actually using and close some of them down. Do you still need that Yahoo or Hotmail email address? Is the information you supplied to that Zoominfo or LinkedIn account still accurate?

5 Payment systems: you no longer need an expensive ‘merchant account’ with an Irish bank to take credit cards online

Thankfully, those days are fading. Services such as Stripe now let your website accept proper credit card transactions — like any other ‘serious’ business — without you having to jump through endless, tortuous hoops by one of the big three Irish banks. Take advantage of this: if you’ve always thought about trading online, allow your website to do so with one of these services.

They’re easy to incorporate for whoever is maintaining your site.

6 There is more funding available than you’d think if you have a good idea

Ireland is awash with competing funds and state grants for companies with actionable, innovative ideas and plans. Combined, private venture capital firms and state bodies, such as Enterprise Ireland, are placing almost €1bn per year into thousands of Irish start-ups and established companies. Outfits such as Frontline Ventures typically invest between €200,000 and €3m in early-stage software companies. On the state side, Enterprise Ireland invested an average of €140,000 in 229 Irish companies last year.

If you applied for one of EI’s €50,000 equity investment schemes, your chances weren’t bad: one in eight applicants was granted the investment.

Local Enterprise Boards widen the net with many more locally available grants and aides.

Even if you simply want to modernise your small firm’s tech or online capability, there are hundreds of “innovation vouchers” worth €5,000 available from Enterprise Ireland (the next deadline for applications is in September).

7 Update your devices to the latest operating systems

The latest online access figures for Ireland show that almost 5pc of our PCs are still using either Windows XP, Windows Vista or a defunct version of Windows 8. While lots of these machines are services specific utilities (such as ATMs or hospital scanners), some are still in use by small firms running shop or office gear.

In some cases, this is dangerously negligent and opens up a chunk of your ecosystem to all sorts of nasty malware and cyber attacks. Remember: Microsoft is no longer providing security support to these systems.

8 GDPR is not just for big corporations

You’ve probably read about the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), an EU law coming into force next May. In a nutshell, it tightens up rules on data protection and data privacy, while massively increasing fines and penalties at the same time. Whereas small firms only had to worry about a slap on the wrist before, they now face administrative fines of thousands of euro straight from the Data Protection Commissioner’s office (as in, no court date).

We’ve written a lot about this separately, but you need to bone up on the new obligations you’ll face under the new law. You may also need to allocate related duties to a member of staff. There are a few international court cases under way that also may ultimately make you change your online storage or cloud providers.

9 How to make sure you never lose any phone contacts ever again

There’s one trick that anyone with any smartphone can do in 30 seconds to ensure contacts never again go walkabout with a lost or stolen phone. Simply save them into Google Contacts.

This is quite easy to do now, either on your old or new phone. Copy your sim contacts onto the phone (iPhone or Android) via ‘settings’ and then copy them again into your Google account (which is the same as your Gmail account). This now allows you to access your saved phone contacts on any phone, simply by adding your Google account in settings.

10 Start taking an online sales strategy more seriously

The phrase ‘that online stuff doesn’t apply to my business’ is one of the most dangerous utterances among Irish business owners. According to the most recent figures from Amarach Research, Irish people are abandoning offline methods of business, with online sales here doubling in the last two years. A third of sales here now occur online, compared to just 17pc two years ago. This is expected to rise to 40pc by the end of this year.

Whether you like it or not, your peers are already doing this. A recent report from the European Commission indicated that Ireland ranked first of 28 EU countries when it comers to small firms incorporating technology at work, a jump from third place last year. It said that Ireland scores especially well in ecommerce and online sales, compared to EU rivals.

A third (32pc) of Irish small to medium-sized businesses sell products or services online, said the Commission. This is twice the average among European small businesses.

It’s time to start taking your online channels much more seriously.