Again! Tech That Doesn't Work Won't Let Us Work

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I sit on the board of a company that publishes technical manuals. Its software, specifically designed for the publishing industry, has been incorrectly calculating subscription revenue for the past 12 months. By coincidence during this period, Research In Motion's (RIMM) BlackBerry service went down, leaving users without communications. Twice. Oh, and this past month the software that drives the London Stock Exchange crashed, closing the markets for a full day.

Throughout the week I'm faced with other business technology that sputters on me. Don't even get me started on Microsoft's (MSFT) Word and other applications.

Keep That Pencil Handy

So what's a business owner to do in response to the vast array of business technology that fails to work properly, if only part of the time?

For starters, we never, ever completely rely on technology. Especially if it's mission critical. Doing so would be irresponsible.

Nowhere is this more clear than with data backups. We're positively anal retentive about backups. We back up our main databases using online backup services like Carbonite and Mozy. And even these applications, like everything else, work—yep, you guessed it—mostly.

How do small businesses place orders or make calls when the Internet is down or phone systems fail? A client of mine still keeps a stack of the old, three-part, paper order forms that were printed up during the Kennedy Administration. Sometimes they get used. When the printer is on the fritz or can't be found on the network, my client is prepared to type up invoices. And when a friend's phone system crashed a few years back, he got a crash course in how to redirect phone calls made to his company's toll-free number over to his own cell phone.

Cope We Must

Finally, we always, always have support. And we budget for it. Software companies want us to believe that they'll solve all of our problems if we just buy their product. They don't tell us that for the product to really succeed, it'll need to come hand in hand with a technology support contract. And this is above and beyond their extortionist maintenance plans. Software and other business technologies need human beings available—to make them work. We know that without support, our businesses will be inconvenienced. Probably at the precisely worst time.

Working 90% to 95% of the time is not working. When my company's services fail to deliver, we don't get paid—and our customers get angry. When a technology product doesn't do what it's supposed to do all the time, we're stuck. Unfortunately, the technology my company buys fails way too much. But like everything else that makes me angry, I just deal with it. And so can you.

Gene Marks, CPA, is the owner of the Marks Group, which sells customer relationship, service, and financial management tools to small and midsize businesses. Marks is the author of four best-selling small business books and writes the popular "Penny Pincher's Almanac" syndicated column. He frequently speaks to business groups on penny-pinching topics. More penny-pinching advice from Marks can be found at www.quickerbetterwiser.com.