#1 – How are you backing up your data?  Online, local hard drive, tape?  A good backup plan will include multiple methods.

#2 – How many backup rotations do you keep?  A backup you overwrite every night is useless.  You should have a minimum of 5 days but 10 days of backups is preferred.  The further you can roll back the better.

#3 – How quick can you restore from a failure?  Traditional backup methods can require more than 3 days to recover from a server loss.  The best can have you back up and running in minutes.  Simulate a server recovery to identify your weak points.

#4 – You do have an off-site backup don’t you?  Backups that are only inside your office are no good if there is a disaster to the building or server room.  All good backup plans must include an offsite backup for mission critical data.

#5 – Online backup only is no good.  If you are only backing up online your recovery plan will have multiple days of delays while you download your data or wait for your data to be shipped to you.  An online backup is never the only answer to recover from a server loss.  You must always have a local full backup.

#1 – Do you really need a CRM system?  Over 50% of the people that ask us for CRM solution really needed nothing more than a centralized contact manager.

#2 – Does the CRM system you are looking at have a mobile app?  If your mobile salespeople  cannot complete their sales report within minutes of leaving the customer they will not complete it or they will forget important information if they wait until that evening.

#3 – How quick can your sales people enter a sales report.  If it takes 30 minutes to enter a report on a customer your salespeople will come up with every excuse not to do it.  There are some systems that use short codes so a call report can be completed in 2 minutes or less.

#4 – Is it hosted or in-house?  Three are pros and cons to each system.  In-house systems appear cheaper in the long run but everyone always forgets about hardware and software maintenance and upgrades when they budget over 3-5 years.  At the end of 3-5 years most companies have a major expenditure for an upgrade.

#5 – Will you require remote or mobile access?  Some in-house systems are not very good at supporting users that are not inside the office.  Make sure you know how many inside and outside users you will need before you start looking at CRM systems.  I have seen costs double when companies forgot about mobile and home access until the end a project. 

#1 – Buy a real firewall.  Home units and old business firewall provide no real security or protection against today’s Internet threats.

#2 – Make sure your firewall can manage and control applications not just ports.  Basic and old firewalls could only secure your network by blocking ports.  New firewalls will actually analyze the traffic and can separate and block traffic like Facebook and YouTube.

#3 – Can you monitor the programs running on your Internet connection?  If not then you need a new firewall.

#4 – Secure your Internet access to prevent viruses and Trojans from stealing your data.  If you are allowing all types of data to exit your firewall then you have no way of blocking an infected machine from spreading it’s data.

#5 – Block all Internet sharing sites.  Not only does over 50% of illegal music and software contain viruses but now the business owner is liable for any illegal activity that an employee does.  Do you want a lawsuit because an employee downloaded music on their lunch hour?