Your database is your most important asset

19th November 2014 :: Author: Andrew Cope, Managing Director, Evergreen

Assets

Would you say that your database is your most important asset?

Or is it your product or service, your staff or even your physical assets?

Our Reliance on computer systems

All of us to some extent in our businesses rely on computers – for pretty much everything! And we all know that computers, while they’re great when they work are not so great when they completely fail to operate effectively.

What if the worst happens?

The issue is that most of us now store a huge amount of information and data on our computers, including our database. Just think for a minute what would happen if you lost your database – all your client and customer data, all those phone numbers, email addresses and even in some cases (if you have a huge amount of customers), the names of them.

Would your business be able to run efficiently?

Would you even be able to survive?

Of course, we all hope that won’t happen to us, but what if it did – are your customer details stored in such a place that you’d be able to retrieve them easily and get to them if your technology completely failed to do its job?

client dataWhat about other non computerised data?

And then we haven’t even explored customer details that are not even on the computer.

What about all those bits of paper you have stored in various notebooks with customer information on it?

What about all those business cards you’ve collected over the years that you’ve never added to a database? Not only can you not do anything with these contacts in terms of marketing or following up with them but what would happen if you had a fire and lost the lot?

 

How to protect your database

So your database, it’s fair to say is a vitally important asset; in fact you could even argue that it’s THE most important asset your business has and if you lost it, it would impact your business in a huge way – and could even be detrimental to running your business in the future.

That’s why it’s so important to protect it so that it’s backed up on a regular basis and that it’s secure so you won’t lose it if everything went wrong. In fact, if at all possible you should be looking to store your database on a completely protected system that’s stored online rather than on your hard drive of your PC or Mac.

That way, if anything goes wrong, it’s not a major problem. You’ll be able to:

  • Know your database is backed up and protected no matter what. If there is a fire, theft of your computer or your computer completely dies, it will be fine. You can simply buy another computer, log on and your database is there.

  • Log on no matter where you are. Because your database is stored online rather than on your hard drive, if you’re out and about and can’t remember that vital phone number you need right now, you can simply log on and find it.

  • Have all your information in one place. Just think for a minute, how great that would be in terms of marketing. If anyone wants to contact a particular customer, follow-up with a customer, send emails out to a particular segment of customers, that’s not a problem. If your information is in lots of places, it’s difficult to do anything with, but if it’s in one place, you can start to use that information and get clients as a result.

  • Follow-up with your customers. How many times have you been waiting for a quote or a call from one of your suppliers and it’s never arrived? With an online database, you’ll be able to make notes as to when customers need to be followed up with so that you can send them a quote or give them a phone call when they’ve requested it.

These are just some of the benefits you’ll have by moving to an online database – remember, your database is your most important asset.

Never forget that!

Evergreen combines intelligence web applications to give you bespoke database, websites, design and content. For more information on how we can help you create an online customer database that protects your data and gives you the ability to market and promote effectively to your customers, please contact us on 01454 269 087 or visit our website at www.evergreencomputing.com