It’s better to be three hours too soon than a minute too late.

Following on from my previous article discussing proactivity, I wanted to take a look at the flipside.

Shakespeare once coined a quote in his play, The Merry Wives of Windsor “Better three hours too soon than a minute too late” with the lesson being about the importance of not procrastinating.

I find that procrastination is one of the most common mistakes businesses tend to make when considering their IT, software, and telephony solutions. Typical agendas that businesses have tended to “kick down the road” include telecoms, data security, GDPR compliance and making refreshments in their IT infrastructure & hardware.

The problem is that it is so easy to put these kinds of things off with reasons such as the cost, time commitment, or a perceived lack of need to future proof the business. However, if problems are encountered then a business can expect to lose a lot more than they bargained for in both time and money.

The COVID-19 pandemic, something that has affected us all over the last two years, is the perfect example of something that can have a huge impact on a business if not adequately planned for. From a business perspective, there were two common problems when the pandemic first hit and we entered our first lockdown.

1)?????Businesses did not have any access to calling facilities, meaning no-one could contact them over the phone, and they could not contact anyone in return.

2)?????Businesses did not have up-to-date hardware, meaning that employees were stuck at home struggling to work, instead of being able to get on with work efficiently.

Whilst the nature of COVID was unprecedented, neither of the two primary impacts of the pandemic from an IT perspective, were beyond the realms of advanced planning. Many businesses could have put in place a contingency plan for such an eventuality but didn’t. This in the IT industry is known as disaster recovery planning.

We have known about unified comms, remote working, and the benefits of making investments in our technology & hardware for years. The tools and principles used to get people up and running from home were not new, so why did it take a global pandemic for entire economies to do something about these outdated working practices? The answer is simple. Many procrastinated as they perceived the risk to be less than the cost of putting a plan in place – “it’ll never happen.”

In a similar vein, albeit from a more positive perspective, the introduction of GDPR was something that had a huge impact on the way businesses approached data privacy.?GDPR as I’m sure many will remember put more onus on individual organisations to ensure they put processes in place to protect client data and process it only when fair and proportionate. If seen to be falling foul of these expectations, businesses could expect to receive a hefty fine from the Information Commissioner’s Office, alongside a potential loss of clients due to lack of trust and reputational damage.

When GDPR first appeared, there was a lot of action taking place. Businesses were changing their practices and adopting better ways of working as a result of the impending change in law. Similar to COVID, there were two types of businesses during this time. There were those that planned ahead and where able to adapt to the change in legislation, and there were those that waited and waited and waited. Those that had planned their approach, faired much better. Their businesses adapted more efficiently, and they gave their employees, customers and suppliers plenty of time to prepare, in the long run saving both time and money.

Whilst there are inevitably differences between the COVID-19 pandemic and the introduction of GDPR, you can spot the similarities. Some businesses procrastinated when it came to GDPR. As opposed to saying “it’ll never happen” here they proclaimed the change was too far off to worry about and their procrastination would have inevitably affected their businesses negatively as a result.

So why am I pointing this out?

Firstly, there is another impending change on the horizon that proactive businesses have already prepared for – the switch off of ISDN. To keep it simple, from 2025 your traditional copper phone line will be turned off. You will need to have moved to a VoIP solution before then if you haven’t already.

I am speaking to a lot of businesses about moving their telephone lines now which is great as there is still plenty of time to do so, and I am calling on businesses to be proactive in their approach. At the very least, they should get the ball rolling by finding out more about their existing phone lines and the basics of a VoIP alternative.

After the last two years we have had, I can certainly appreciate why businesses have held off updating their telephony. However, we are starting to see the green shoots of recovery, and I firmly believe, that planning for this change will be more beneficial than waiting to be pushed. It’ll give you time to adapt to the new technology, ensure staff know how it works and allow you time to research and make a decision in your own time.

Typically, when moving from an outdated solution, to a new one there is the typical worry of cost amongst others. However, telephony prices are often lower with VoIP than the traditional alternative, whilst providing a far greater range of features. Additionally, these solutions are quick, painless and can be implemented without causing too much disruption to the wider business. In this blog post we discuss the reliability of VoIP.

The second reason for pointing this out is wider reaching and takes me back to Shakespeare – “It’s better to be three hours early than a minute too late.”

Planning for future eventualities should be a core component of your IT strategy and it will allow you to ride out difficulties with much greater ease when they arise. I don’t want to be alarmist, but disasters and change do happen, we’ve seen that. However, it’s those business that are aware of that fact and prepare for it that flourish.

Don’t put it off. Plan ahead. Be early and stop being late.?