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Earlier this month while attending the Managing Partner Forum Small and Boutique Firms, I was talking with a law firm Managing Partner who’d advised his emails had been down for 24 hours while he was at the conference. He was clearly not amused by the situation and indicated he was going to have some “stern” words to say to his IT company once he got back home from the conference.
In digging a little deeper with some questions, I found out that the cause was they had not transferred one of his domain names when they took over the firms IT. Now, while this may not seem like a very big mistake, it can be potentially catastrophic for you. The Managing Partner also mentioned this wasn’t a recent change and it had been some time since they changed IT companies.
Would it be outrageous of me to ask what would happen if you were in the middle of working on a series of very important matters for clients and you ended up losing the client because you or your team didn’t respond in a timely fashion? How would this effect your reputation in the market and your firms livelihood?
Not long after this I was doing some market research with a lead, we had obtained from a conference back in 2019. In doing this market research I stumbled upon another mistake that could have a drastic negative lasting impact.
In this case, the firms domain name was registered to an IT company, possibly their current one, rather than the firm itself. While your IT company needs to have some level of control over the domain, they should never be registering your intellectual property under their company name.
In effect this means they own the domain name, and should you ever get into a dispute with them, they can hold you to ransom. Personally, having tried to go down the route to recover a domain name that I didn’t think someone else should own, it costed me a lot of lost time, money, stress and anxiety that I didn’t need.
I had to engage a law firm to write letters on my behalf, send them to this party, and I still got nowhere.
Yes, you could register a new domain name, however you then have to communicate to your clients and hope they don’t think this is a scam. All of this costs you time and money, not to mention the associated soft costs of stress and anxiety you don’t need.
In an unrelated example, earlier this year, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that the fast-food chain White Castle violated the state’s Biometric Information Privacy Act by requiring employees to use their fingerprints to access company systems without their consent. One employee took issue, lawyered up and is now leading a class action lawsuit that is estimated may cost the company US $17 billion.
I don’t know all the details, but my guess is that some well-meaning IT company or person sold the executive team on the idea of using this technology to increase security, lower costs, improve efficiency, etc. Someone trusted them to know what they were doing and the recommendations they made, and now they’re facing a complete and total disaster.
In business, and all throughout our lives, we all have to make decisions about who we can trust and whose advice to follow. Pick the wrong person and they can impart serious harm. That’s why you must have litmus tests in place to determine who you CAN trust that are designed to reveal the true competence and character of the person you’re about to put your faith in.
Far too many have misplaced their trust in people and companies, based on frivolous, emotional, irrational reasons vs. competence and track record. Most people do not take the time to carefully investigate the company or individual they are about to trust with critical aspects of their business, finances and lives.
Would it be ridiculous of me to ask how not carefully investigating a company, that has so much impact on your firm or business, and the income it provides for you or your family is a good idea?
My Info Tech Partner is a trusted IT Services and IT Support provider in Perth that specialises in helping the equity principals, partners, directors and practice managers of legal, accounting and financial services firms from making big expensive mistakes with technology and ultimately, protect their livelihood.
Naturally, we are the only one that offers you enhanced peace of mind with our “Never Pay the Ransom” $10,000 money back Guarantee.
To see what we can do for you, click here or go to: www.myinfotechpartner.com.au/consult/ to schedule a quick initial consultation call.
