As we race full steam ahead into 2024, it’s worth taking a breath and taking stock of the year we’ve just had.

Often for us, that means that we look at the blogs we’ve written this year that all of you have enjoyed the most.

We’ve got a couple of strong themes this year, both focusing on keeping data safe and secure as well as trips on Growing your business and outsourcing tasks.

In case you missed them earlier in the year, here is a rundown of these popular reads.

Back in the spring, we were looking at the best ways that you can store data as a small business – as more and more data is becoming our lifeblood.

It really isn’t possible to rely on old-fashioned ways of storing anymore, so we explore your options from the humble USB stick all the way through to cloud storage. There will be a solution that works for everyone.

As much time and effort as you put into improving your IT systems, there are still others to work on that will have a significant impact on your business. Unsurprisingly many of these include customer relationships.

This blog focuses on why you should aim to freshen up your processes around onboarding, invoicing and retention – to keep your customers happy and coming back for more.

Following the data theme another popular blog this year was on the steps to take if you experience a data breach.

Whilst some of the steps might seem like common sense it is useful to have the general procedures set out so nothing gets missed. Remember, dealing with something like this successfully is all about identifying the breach, containing it and putting in steps so it doesn’t occur again.

The last two blogs have more of a focus on business growth, while this first one taking a focus on the tricky question of when you should start outsourcing your IT.

We’ve put down a couple of indicators to look out for so you know it might be time, but a key takeaway here is to stop thinking about your IT like IT and treat it more like a professional service such as accountancy.

And finally, we wrote this back in the summer but it’s still very much applicable at any time of year. In fact, as we go into a new year perhaps now more than ever.

Read on for tips that you can follow and implement to build your business into 2024.