Backing up data used to be a time-consuming, complicated chore. However, this is no longer the case. It still remains an important activity, which you cannot find an excuse not to do anymore.

As well as my newsagency stores I own Tower Systems; a company that sells epos systems to a variety of different retail channels in Australia. I recently heard about a retailer who had experienced a major computer malfunction and required access to a backup to load recent data onto the new computer. They did not have a backup as they said it was taking too long every day so they stopped doing it a year earlier.

Now, thanks to cloud based services, continuous local backup drives and other devices there are many options. There is no excuse for not backing up.

My management advice today is to check that you are backing up and that your back-up and restore process is working. If time is an issue, enquire about services that eliminate the need for your time.

Your product, sales and stock data is one of your key business assets: protect it.