A recent article in Business Week, Upwardly Mobile in Africa, highlights the power of technology in emerging economies. For many African entrepreneurs in rural areas, having a cell phone has catapulted their businesses far beyond those without convenient communications. People living on as little as $2 per day are able to swing the $20 cell phone and prepaid air charges. Even though it is an investment, the benefits are being realized, taking business to new levels there.

In the U.S., where kids as young as 5 have been spotted with kiddie-size cellular devices, it take a little more than a phone to gain a competitive advantage in your business. Technology can nonetheless provide significant benefit. Consider whether or not these various types of technologies can help you grow your business:

1. Contact Management. Absolutely, hands down, a must for small business owners. This type of software allows you to record information about the people you meet, when you last contacted them, when you need to follow up, etc. Some people I know use their Outlook contacts for this, which can work OK. I have been using ACT! contact manager software for over 10 years and although it has some limitations (you can’t keep records at a company level – just at the individual level) it has served me well. There are also online options if you don’t like to carry software on your machine, but I like to have access when I am not able to get connected to the internet (which still happens!).

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I never wanted to be a cautionary tale, but here it is. I haven’t been blogging much in the past few weeks because I have been struggling with technology issues. Specifically, my laptop died. An entrepreneur’s nightmare.
Now just to vent a bit…this isn’t the first time this has happened to me. In truth, it is probably the 8th time this has occurred in the last 18 months, enough to make ANYONE nuts. My mother board went out, which means my display is a mess of mangled characters, not even close to resembling the most bizarre written languages. The cost to repair: $500. To understand why this is so unreasonable to me, you have to understand that this is the 4th mother board that has gone in this same computer in a little over a year. To make it worse, this was a machine that Toshiba sent me to replace the OTHER lemon I had, which required 4 new hard drives within a three month time frame.

Thankfully, I am a bit of a geek so I was able to get all of my data off making my decision to never use a Toshiba laptop again easier. However, the lesson for you, especially the not-so-geeky ones out there – when is the LAST TIME you backed up the data off your computer? Do you even know how to make a copy of your mail file so you don’t lose all your contacts with your recent e-mail? Although my husband SWEARS I emit some magnetic field that tends to fry electronic hardware, I believe the threat is not reserved for me. If you use technology extensively in your business like most entrepreneurs, you need to follow these guidelines for protecting yourself:

1. Create a backup of all critical files and when possible, keep a copy of them offsite. This can be in the form of a memory stick (they’re so inexpensive now!), a CD, or even another machine. Files should be backed up on a frequency that works with how often you update them. Weekly would be a minimum for average entrepreneurial activity.

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