A disaster recovery plan is a formal, official document created by an organization or a consulting authority. As imagined, disaster recovery planning is more important now than ever before.
If the coronavirus pandemic has taught us anything, it is that all businesses need to be prepared for all kinds of disasters and unprecedented circumstances. Otherwise, they risk losing money, or even closing their doors for good, if a catastrophic event such as this happens again.
What It Covers
Disaster recovery planning covers all disruptive events, such as natural disasters, cyber attacks, power outages, unplanned incidents, and so on. For each event, the disaster recovery plan lays out how one might respond effectively to the event in order to minimize the disruption.
For example, when disaster recovery planning in case of failure of IT and voice services, consider a cloud-hosted unified communications and VoIP software. With these solutions hosted in the cloud, they are accessible by any device with internet connectivity. So, if phone lines were to go down, then your phones are not affected. In addition, if computers crashed or power went out, you would still be able to operate communications using battery powered laptops, tablet computers, and even smartphones.
The Benefits of Disaster Recovery Planning
Disaster recovery planning offers many benefits. These include the following:
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Reduced Business Downtime
Disasters do happen, and when they do, this means you might have to close your doors. However, with a disaster recovery plan, you ensure that business downtime keeps to a minimum, and thus less money is lost.
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Lessened Potential of Long-term Damage
One event potentially has a huge knock on effect to the rest of your business. By lessening the impact of an unforeseen event, you ensure that long-term damage keeps to a minimum.
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Increased Customer Retention
In today’s day and age, consumers want a business that they can trust. By showing that you have the necessary plans in place to protect your business and their custom, you are more likely to assuage their fears, and thus increase customer retention.
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Easier Scaling of the Business
Many disaster recovery plans involve cloud-hosted software and tools. By investing in such technology, it makes it much easier to relocate or grow your business.
How to Implement a Disaster Recovery Plan
Once you settled on a plan, follow these steps to implement it:
1. Get Your Priorities in Order
What is it you need to protect? Which of these objectives is the most important? Consider how you might solve potential problems, whilst still sticking to the order of priority.
2. Draft the Plan
Draft the plan. Include the necessary protocols and softwares that you might put in place.
3. Test It
Simulate a disaster, such as by switching off your IT systems or power. This is in order to test how effective your plan is. Identify potential problems, tweak the plan, and then redraft until optimized fully.
4. Training
Distribute the information on the plan to all employees. Ensure thorough training so that everyone knows what to do if the time comes.
In Closing
Overall, you should now know what a disaster recovery plan is, why you need one, what it brings to your business, and how to implement it successfully. With this information in mind, you have all the tools you need to begin future proofing your business.
