Smaller businesses urged to take action

By Adam Gifford

The Y2K Readiness Commission is undertaking further research into how it can get small and medium sized businesses to take appropriate action to protect themselves from the Year 2000 bug.

Surveys by the commission have found many small businesses with equipment which could contain the Y2K problem still have not started to assess their risks.

The commission also found almost half of all small businesses don't intend to monitor their suppliers' progress nor communicate their own Y2K progress to customers. They also say they do not need a business continuity plan.

Technical adviser John Good said the commission wanted to nail down how it could reach the sector.

"We hope to find out through focus groups the reason businesses say they don't need a business continuity plan or why they're not talking to suppliers, and use that to get across to them that they ought to."

Mr Good said the commission was also attempting to assess the "bewildering" number of automated tools available and make recommendations on tools and service providers who can help small businesses.

"From the study we have done so far, there is no tool which will cover the whole bit for you."

"The thing which is missing from the tools is the methodology to relate the technical risk to the business risk. They will tell you how many technical diseases you have but not what it means to your business."

Mr Good said the small business sector did not seem as bad as in some countries, where large numbers were saying they would do nothing and fix things when and if they broke down after January 1.

He said companies taking that approach might find it hard to find a fix if there were a lot of things falling over.

Mr Good said plans could not just be written, but had to be tested. "Inevitably if you do test them, the first time they don't work."

Distributors and resellers of Y2K tools confirm the message is getting through only slowly.

Christchurch-based Tony Trewinnard, who distributes the Centennial 2000 tool for checking PCs, said while there was a high level of awareness "that's not being translated into action".

Mr Trewinnard said many people mistakenly believed they still had a reasonable amount of time to deal with the problem.

"It shows they're prepared to take a certain level of loss. In terms of individual business that may be an acceptable decision to make, but in terms of the Y2K impact on the local and world economy, it's dangerous," he said.

At the level of the small business or office, Y2K work can be quite straightforward, involving a test of the hardware, the computer's operating system and checking the application software to see if it can handle dates in the next century.

Mr Trewinnard said with the right tools and procedures the work could be done in-house without consultants, but firms had to be ready for some shocks.

"It may be expensive if applications have to be upgraded, because the upgrades may need more powerful PCs."

The advantage of using tools such as Centennial 2000 or Check 2000, rather than pieces of shareware, is they allow extensive reporting on what has been done, which may be needed to satisfy auditors.

Allan MacLean, from Auckland-based MacLean Computing, resells the market-leading Check 2000 tool. He said companies had to accept there was something to be done.

"With PCs made before March 1997, a simple hardware fix is required for a start. That's the easy bit," Mr MacLean said. "The real key is also to have a complaint operating system and software and clean data."

He said firms had to also keep on top of operating system patches and upgrades, which could clash with work already done.

Greenwich Mean Time, the makers of Check 2000, have developed another tool, Watchdog 2000, to keep systems clean once they have been fixed and scan any incoming files for year 2000 problems. "People need to understand these machines and software are extremely complex, and they need to have time to sort through any problems.

"A lot of people have taken the opportunity to upgrade not only their Y2K patch but to get new machines and new accounting packages, so the industry is overloaded already. There's a shortage now. We can't recruit enough engineers."

Mr MacLean said many small firms had been lulled into thinking once their hardware was patched their problems were over. "We see very little contingency planning. Most small businesses have no contingency plans at all, it's all seat of the pants stuff."

While he isn't predicting lots of business failures caused by Y2K, "I see lots of late nights and panics in January".

Going back to doing things like invoices by hand was not a realistic option. "Computers are no longer an adjunct to business, computers are the business."