Your Technology Tuneup

By Thomas G. Stephens Jr., CITP, CGMA

Technology is great – until it isn’t. When your technology doesn’t perform well, your productivity and security suffer. Further, technology glitches impair your ability to serve customers and clients – both internal and external. Fortunately, when your technology doesn’t perform well, you are not necessarily looking at a “rip-and-replace” situation. Much like tuning up a car – you may find that a technology tuneup is all that’s needed to reclaim the performance you need. So read on, and you will learn about 10 simple actions you can take to complete your technology tuneup.

Remove Unnecessary Programs

One of the most fundamental steps you can take in your technology tuneup is to remove any unnecessary programs installed on your computer. These programs may include demonstration software or trial versions of software you chose not to work with on an ongoing basis. Keeping unnecessary programs installed can hinder your computer’s performance, clutter your hard disk and even potentially compromise security. A great way to identify unused and unnecessary software is to download the Belarc Advisor tool and use it to scan your computer. Among other things, this tool – which is free for personal use – will scan your computer and let you know all the software titles installed and the last time you used them. With this information, you can quickly determine which ones you should uninstall.

Get A Grip on Your Passwords

Passwords remain a necessary evil for most business professionals and their technology. Yet, many of these same professionals do not follow best practices for creating and using passwords and often reuse the same password across multiple accounts. This practice generates significant security risks and can be corrected easily by using a password management tool. Tools such as Zoho Vault, LastPass, RoboForm and others all offer inexpensive options to assist you in creating, managing, and using your passwords. If you’re not presently using a password management tool, now is the time to start!

Address Your Monitors

Many business professionals use multiple monitors to improve their efficiency by seeing and working with more data at any point in time. Unfortunately, sometimes their multiple monitor arrangements consist of monitors of different sizes, which can hamper productivity. If you’re using multiple monitors, ensure they are all the same size to realize the efficiency of multiple monitor environments. Further, you may even consider replacing multiple monitors with a single large monitor for even greater productivity, with fewer issues associated with arranging windows.

Pay Attention to Ergonomics

Ergonomics matter, and work environments that ignore this can hamper productivity and even lead to health issues. Consider your workspace ergonomics, including items such as the type of chair you use, whether a sit/stand desk would be best, curved keyboards and an ergonomic mouse. For example, the ergonomically-designed mouse lineup available from Evoluent receives outstanding reviews for reducing pain associated with carpal tunnel issues.

Update Drivers for Peripherals

Your peripheral devices – printers, scanners, etc. – use “drivers” to facilitate connections to your computer. Over time, the manufacturers of these devices often update these drivers. Unfortunately, however, many users have adopted a “set it and forget it” approach and fail to recognize that the drivers they are using might be outdated and create a drag on performance. You can follow Microsoft’s guidance on this topic at this link and access step-by-step instructions.  

Verify Your Backup Strategy is Appropriate

In the event of your computer crashing, could you recover all your data quickly? Are you sure? Now is the time to carefully consider your backup strategy! Are all your critical data files backed up? Have you tested to determine that you can recover them? Once you make a backup, do you disconnect the backup medium to create an “air gap” between your computer or server and the backup medium? Remember, in the event of a computer or server failure, your backup is your path to recovery, and a failure here could be crippling to your business. To illustrate, the U.S. government has reported that over 90% of companies that suffer a catastrophic loss of data will file for bankruptcy within one year! Given that, how comfortable are you that your backup strategy is appropriate?

Cancel Unnecessary Subscriptions and Services

In a world of subscription services, it is all too easy to sign for a service, use it for a few months, and then begin drifting away from using it. Unfortunately, as that happens, the service provider is still billing your credit card, even though you no longer actively use the service. Therefore, both at a personal and a corporate level, it is a great time to take an inventory of all your software subscriptions and services and verify that you (and your team) still use them and need them. Ensure that you cancel the subscriptions to reduce your expenses for those that are no longer used or needed.

Delete or Archive Older Data

In an era of huge capacities on our hard disks and very inexpensive cloud-based storage options, it can be tempting to fall into the trap of holding on to old and unnecessary data. Unfortunately, this practice has several adverse side effects. For example, retaining old data beyond your records retention policy’s requirements can increase legal risk and exposure. And from a technology perspective, all this old data can clutter your hard disk, make it harder to find the newer data your need to get your job done and complicate your backup strategies. Therefore, ensure that you comply with your records retention policy and purge or archive data based on the specifics of your policy. And, if you don’t have a records retention policy in place, or if it is outdated, now is a great time to address that issue.

Run Tuneup Software

Over time, our computer’s performance can decline and become sluggish for various reasons. Fortunately, you can use automated tools to address the root causes of these issues and restore performance to acceptable levels. For example, the Belarc Advisor tool mentioned earlier is great for helping to identify all the applications installed on a computer, the various peripherals attached to it and similar information. But it doesn’t tune up your device. For that, you can use a tool such as CCleaner Professional. With this type of tool, you can optimize the performance of your computer automatically, resulting in faster startup time, more available space on your hard disk and improved overall performance.

Summary

As mentioned previously, technology is great until it isn’t. Over time, the performance of our technology can degrade. Sometimes this happens because of our actions (and inactions!) and sometimes because of factors beyond our control. No matter, we can optimize our technology’s performance and improve data security along the way with periodic technology tuneups. If you follow the guidelines outlined above, you will find that your technology performs better and more securely, and you may even be able to defer expenditures for replacements. Best of luck with your efforts!

Reprinted with permission by the Tennessee Society of CPAs.
 
Stephens is one of the shareholders of K2 Enterprises. At K2, Tommy focuses on creating and delivering content and is responsible for many Firm management and marketing functions. You may reach him at tommy@k2e.com, and you may learn more about K2 Enterprises at www.k2e.com.