The Blackberry outage that occurred last month reminded many people of how much their lives depend on a smoothly functioning electronic world. When 61 million subscribers, used to instant communications, suffered a blackout, two things resulted:

• Initial panic or, at a minimum, frustration
• A backlog of mail, slowing productivity the next day

While that shutdown was not something that could be controlled by individual users, there are many other situations where you do have control. Do you have a backup plan for when:

• Your laptop is lost on a trip?
• Your PC’s fan goes out and fries the motherboard?
• A coworker deletes a key document by mistake?
• Your modem is damaged?

As everyone scurries around, busier and busier, it is often difficult to make yourself stop and take the time to ensure that there is always an alternative. Yet without laptops, PCs, and email, business can slow to a crawl.

Start exploring some alternatives such as:

• duplicate hard drive, kept offsite and backed up weekly
• a spare modem
• daily online backup of documents

My IT person keeps reminding us that it is not a question of “if” a hard drive will crash, but rather “when.” I think we should expand that consideration beyond the hard drive and be sure that we have an alternative solution for all of our electronic needs.In the interest of saving time it is easy to put off acquiring extra hardware or arranging new backup methods.

Be careful you do not use your time like the Ben Franklin adage: “Penny wise, pound foolish.” Picture the alternative, with its frustrations, along with the extra costs for replacement, and the cost of lost business opportunities. Good time management dictates that this is not optional.