You don’t have to be a multinational corporation to rely on servers and online applications to keep your business running smoothly. Many small and medium-sized businesses depend heavily on technology to streamline operations.
Whether it’s through in-house servers with IT support or partnerships with cloud service providers like BlackBox to host applications and data, it’s important to have a plan in place for when things go wrong.
A disaster recovery plan is an important component of establishing your business processes. While you might have backup services in place, there are times those fail as well, and a plan that covers all bases can protect your business from accumulating losses.
Here are five examples of how disaster planning can save organisations from major setbacks.
1. Ensuring Business Continuity During Disasters
An important part of disaster recovery is to ensure that your business keeps running when something goes wrong. Whether it’s an external attack or an internal system failure, each minute your systems are down, you end up losing revenue and customers’ trust.
A good recovery plan will always ensure that your business-critical services are up and running without increasing the downtime while they try to fix the problem. This might involve restoring from a backup to keep your day-to-day operations running smoothly while the problem is being fixed.
2. Gives You an Edge Over Competitors
When a customer is deciding between two competitive companies, they consider more than just your products. They also factor in how others perceive your company and how secure their personal information will be if they trust you with it.
Having a strong disaster recovery system in place can prove to be valuable when building customer trust. It shows that you’re prepared for the unexpected, making customers more likely to choose you over competitors who may lack similar disaster management plans.
3. Helps You Remain Compliant
If you work in certain industries, it’s essential to have a disaster recovery system in place to meet legal and regulatory requirements. This is common with medical or government institutions where data privacy and security are of utmost importance.
If you’re a part of such industries, it’s important to ensure that your disaster recovery plans are in place. If you’re unsure where to start, some companies specialise in helping you set up effective systems.
4. Helping Boost Employee Morale
A small business could be a data disaster away from bankruptcy. There have been companies like KNP Logistics that faced a cyberattack and, as a result, filed for insolvency and had to lay off 700 workers. If employees are aware that a system is in place, they are more likely to have faith in your company’s operations.
An effective disaster recovery plan should involve input from employees, as each one will play a role in recovering data. When employees are confident that the business can bounce back, they’re more motivated to contribute to its long-term success.
5. Helps in Maintaining Your Reputation
The quality of your product or service goes a long way in gaining the trust of stakeholders, customers, and potential investors. However, if you can’t answer what your plan is when things go wrong, you won’t be able to maintain that trust for a long time.
While you’re working on perfecting your product or service, it’s also important to pay attention to what you would do in case your data or systems get corrupted. A good recovery plan will make sure that your business operations are uninterrupted and that your clients or customers face minimum delays.
Summing It Up
Many businesses focus on offering the best products or services and using top-tier software and applications, but often overlook backups and the importance of setting up a disaster recovery system.
A disaster recovery plan needs to be at the forefront of your planning instead of an afterthought. Even if there isn’t an immediate crisis, having a system in place positively impacts your customers, investors, employees, and ultimately, your bottom line.
It’s also liberating to have that peace of mind that even if something goes wrong, there are systems in place to ensure the business continues running and the day-to-day operations are not affected.
