Every business has to prepare for the worst. Those that don’t may never fully recover from a disaster. Here are 7 key principles of business continuity to ensure proper planning.
1. Get employees involved
Business Continuity (BC) plans only work if everyone understands them. Employees are also a great source of ideas and insights about how your business might be affected by a disaster. So business must communicate BC plans to employees regularly — and actively solicit their input.
2. Keep customers in the loop
Customers are the lifeblood of every business. They should be treated as such even during a disaster. Alerts on the company website, email broadcasts, social media and text messages to key contacts’ mobile phones are all good ways for a business to express concern about the impact of a disaster on its customers. That level of service can even help transform a disaster into an opportunity for greater long-term customer loyalty
3. Collaborate with suppliers
Businesses increasingly work in tightly interdependent networks of suppliers and partners. By working collaboratively with these third parties, businesses can make themselves even more resilient and well-protected against disasters large and small.
4. Periodically test and update business continuity plans
It’s not enough to formulate a plan once and put it on paper. Assumptions about a plan should be validated with real-life testing. Plans also have to be updated continuously to ensure that they accommodate changes in the business’s products, services, relationships, size, geographic reach, etc.
5. Factor in compliance
Businesses are subject to a variety of regulatory mandates that may require certain disaster preparedness measures. OSHA may be particularly relevant in regards to workplace safety.
6. Examine insurance options carefully
Coverages vary greatly, and policy language can be confusing. Businesses have to exercise careful legal and financial diligence to ensure that their policies cover all aspects of disaster recovery and revenue loss, not just the repair of initial damage. In some cases, it may make sense to obtain contingent business interruption insurance. This type of policy provides additional coverage for the harm a disaster can do to a business indirectly, for example, if a supplier in a different climate fails to deliver promised goods because of a local blizzard.
7. Data backup is not enough
Many businesses think they’re safe just because they’ve backed up their critical files. The problem is that those files depend on applications and systems to be of any use to the business. That’s why, in the event of a disaster, it’s essential to be able to run applications on-demand from virtual machines backed up in the cloud.
Learn more via Datto’s Natural Disaster Survival Guide.
Contact us today to learn how our Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) can help protect your business.
President / Network Architect
Mark Kolean always had a fascination with technology from the time he was 3 and his gift of the Atari 2600 to current. In 1990 at the age of 14 Mark got his first job in customer support for a mail order business supporting Tandy TSR-80 computer software shipped on cassette tape. A few years later Mark was building hundreds of 286, 386, and 486 computers for the new emerging DOS & Windows 3.1 computers that had exploded on the market.
After a college career studying business and technology Mark Started Shoreline Computer Systems in 1999 at the height of the dot.com boom with the looming crisis of the year2k bug just around the corner. In the early 2000’s a lot of work was done with early network systems including Lantastic, Novell, and Windows NT Server. Mark became a community contributor to the Small Business Specialist community that revolved around Small Business Server 2000-2011 which focused on single or dual server environments for businesses up to 50 in size. Networks during this time frame mostly had a break fix relationship in which work was billed only when a problem occurred.
In the 2010’s Microsoft released their first cloud based software called Microsoft BPOS which would in later become known as Microsoft Office 365. This introduced a new model in technology with pay as you go subscription services. Starting in 2013 Mark’s team at Shoreline Computer System rebranded as Shoreline Technology Solutions to focus on the transition to become proactive and less reactive to data backup and security needs. Starting in 2018 all customers are required to have a backup management plan in place as a center point with the full understanding that if STS isn’t watching the customer’s data, then no one is.
Now in Mark’s 22 years of business he is building a company emphasis of how to help customers retire servers and build networks completely in the cloud.
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