Small businesses are key players in regional economies. Many small business entrepreneurs are experts in what they do but start a business without any training or experience in IT management practices. As a result of inadequate IT management, small businesses experience data loss and, consequently, fail in the early years as a business. According to a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers, 70% of small businesses that have a major data loss go out of business within a year. They fail not because of a flaw in the product or service they offer, but because the business was not properly managed from the IT side. In order to successfully manage the most valuable aspect of any business – data, a small business has to hire an IT administrator, outsource the IT management task or get a training on how to fulfill the IT task themselves. Small businesses usually do not have dedicated IT staff and have little desire to spend a lot of time or money on technology or sign up for complicated licensing agreements.
The survey shows that:
- 29.41% have no IT administrators in-house or a possibility to hire one.
- 19.23% look for data management tools to handle all data maintenance on site and from a single interface, with minimal involvement.
- 23.53% back up data manually.
- 76.47% back up data automatically.
- 50% prefer to store data physically and virtually.
- 20% do not conduct daily backups.
- 42.86% of those who do not back up daily indicated that the reason is that it’s not an efficient use of their time.
- 21.54% said reliability is the most important factor in data backup tools.
Click to find the full survey results.