You might as well address issue of Backups while you are about it. •Who is responsible person for backing up your databases/s? Who covers for them when they are absent or unavailable? •How frequently are backups to be done? Diarise! •How are backups done e.g. by Grandfather, Father, Son method. •Ensure backups are made on good quality CD’s or whatever format you are using. It’s no good doing a backup, then finding on attempting a Restore that it doesn’t work! It is also a good idea to copy backups onto more than one data format. •Where are backups to be stored? •Are backups secure? This is important for both security and practical reasons.

Once your Data Capture Procedure Document is finished, get everyone to sign it off as READ!

As standard practice, ensure that document is handed to all new employees at your company.

Refer back to this document for possible revision every three months or so.

Try this: select a couple of records - both good and bad - every week, to put on overhead at staff meetings. Make sure you don’t unduly embarrass anybody but watch this become light-relief highlight of your meetings! People learn best when having fun!

What if your database is in one unholy mess? Has rot set in so deeply that your database needs a complete overhaul? Turn this seemingly insurmountable task into an opportunity to you. This is an excellent excuse to re-establish contact with your clients and let them know you care. You can always put lapses down to data crashes but tell them you have fixed problem!

Importantly, help your staff understand what you need from data to facilitate more accurate marketing and reporting and hence success of your business and their careers.

By creating a sense of pride and ownership in company database, you are nurturing essential process of buy-in, necessary for success of your CRM initiative. Don’t compromise this critical tool by allowing your CRM software to be infected by inferior data.

4. Install and run Adaware. Adaware is another free spyware/adware detection and removal tool. I've found that using just one spyware detection tool is not enough. Using these two tools will detect and remove a majority of spyware programs on your machine. This tool should be run in conjunction with Spybot. Again, make sure latest updates are downloaded and installed each time Adaware is used. Download it at http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/.

5. Use an Anti-virus program. Viruses can cause a lot of headaches for people. Since Viruses have been well publicized, I have noticed many people have an anti-virus program installed. However, people never update to latest definition file. This is a must because latest definition file will provide defenses against latest viruses. If you do not update this file, you are only protecting yourself against viruses that are known to date of definition file. Either setup your anti-virus program to automatically update definition file every week, or make sure that you manually update file every week.

6. Use Mozilla Firefox 1.0 browser. Change your browser to recently released free Firefox browser. Internet Explorer has many holes that spyware programs target and exploit. Microsoft has tried to keep up and release updates to fix problems, but it seems like after every fix a new vulnerability is discovered. To protect your system, just download Firefox and start to use it as your default browser. Firefox is setup very similar to Internet Explorer; so learning how to use new browser will not be a problem. You can configure browser to block pop-ups. This is a nice feature to battle those annoying pop-up windows. It also has a great tab feature. This allows you to open multiple pages inside one browser window. Visit http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/ to download latest version.

The above spyware prevention system should help your computer or network stay protected and running at optimal performance. If you have never run a spyware program such as Spybot or Adaware I think you will be amazed at what is detected on your system. Sometimes I find over 100 suspect spyware programs installed on computers. No wonder your system is running slow.