E192 – Redundancy. Redundancy.

This episode was not planned but after a run-in on our own mission critical solution (online podcast recording solution) we thought it was a perfect time to dig into how companies need to think about having redundancy of skills and solutions that are mission critical to them.

Tool Finding & Selection

If you missed our episode with Kevin Mullett go listen to Tool Discovery and Selection Tips W/ Kevin Mullett as we really dig into how he goes about finding options for X online and keeps a long list. Now you don't need 10 alternatives for something but having 1-2 that you have already tested, vetted and shortlisted may not be a bad idea.

Transcriptions

For this podcast we use a few hardware and software tools. One that we talk about is Trycast and Zencaster but there is also the transcription service we use.

While again we love the one we use what if it went away? What if there is something better for us we just didn't know about? So for an episode but also for our knowledge we did What is the Best Transcription Service?.

Keep Short Lists

Keep aware of what solutions are still active, winning awards, adding features, and just staying updated. Maybe every X months or once a year take a look at your shorts lists and just quickly check on them. Over time that "short list" may evolve or change and you need to make sure that when the time comes that you need to use a service/solution from that list if it is outdated it might be useless. Companies are sold and close so keeping a loose list of updated services for mission critical services for your business is paramount to you staying in business.

Redundant Skills aka Cross Train

No matter if you are an agency or in-house you also need to cross train. It is likely that you have one person that owns X where X could be a vendor relationship, knowledge of tools or services or just the keys and logins to something. What happens if they leave, something bad happens and they are out of work for awhile or maybe they just go on vacation. If they are on vacation and you need access to X RIGHT NOW, what is your plan?

Think about cross training and creating internal backups. Have Suzie train John on how to use a tool. If there are webinars or new feature meetings with that vendor, have them join and just listen. Maybe even assign them a small task every now and then just so they can stay updated on how things work. They don't need to be experts on it but should have a basic understanding of how to log in or fire it up and do some of the basics. This way you are also having your staff and skills shared and not locked into one key person.

Mission Critical = Find Backups

If something is mission critical to your business make a backup. Whatever the skill, service or whatever - make sure you have a short list of backups for it so that your business is NOT crippled by one thing going down or closing.

Full Transcript

Matt Siltala: [00:00:00] Welcome to another exciting episode of the business of digital podcast, featuring your host, Matt scintilla and Dave roar. Hey guys, excited to have everyone join us on another one of these businesses, digital podcast episodes as always Dave, how's

Dave Rohrer: [00:00:17] it going, bud? It is. It is. Yes. Hey,

Matt Siltala: [00:00:26] as of right now, there's none. There's no noises in my background anymore. So I probably shouldn't have said that. I just changed it, but you did. Um, so funny enough when, uh, Dave and I had planned to record this episode, um, or the series that we're doing right now, um, I get a little ping from Dave saying, Hey, our normal.

Uh, service that we used is down. And so I'd sit in there for a while and he didn't say anything else. And then pretty soon an alternative way to record these episodes popped up. And Dave and I started chatting about it and we said, Hey, you know what? This would make a great idea for an episode about making sure that you have redundancies.

And so that's k