Depositit Business Continuity Solutions
How have you prepared your business for an emergency?
What is Business Continuity?
Business Continuity or Disaster Recovery as it is sometimes called is the ability to continue running your company smoothly in the event of
an emergency.
Why think about Business Continuity?
Small and large scales emergencies occur every single day, and the level of impact they have on your business depends on what buffers
you have put in place to protect yourself.
Such crisis might include your Internet going down (for a few minutes to days!), phone lines being cut through, mobile phone being lost/stolen/damaged, power failure, flooding, fire, theft, computer viruses and system errors, key staff members being injured or leaving.
Listen to one of our clients describe his company's loss of data and the easy retrieval process via the Depositit business continuity plan they had in place:
How best to prepare for Business Continuity?
Preparation is key and the two main things to consider in the first instance are:
1. Having a Business Continuity Plan
2. Using compliant Business Continuity tools
Business Continuity Plans
There are many plans available and these can often be found on the Internet, via a specialist company or even from your Insurance provider.
They will normally be divided into sections allowing you to consider the various areas of your business (health and safety, premises, IT including computers/phone systems, emergency contact numbers).
All plans should be stored centrally, in a safe location and also a copy should be stored safely off-site in case access to the office is not available! The plan should be regularly updated and rehearsals of certain procedures carried out.
Having a plan in place will offer confidence to a company going through an emergency as the crisis will already have been considered and possibly even rehearsed, consequently reducing anxiety and downtime.
Business continuity tools
Business continuity tools include your plan and also go a step further by having in place an online backup of your computer files. Other tools might
include an emergency alert service, spare mobile phone, a standby telephone number or call centre that the office line can be switched over to
and even a standby broadband connection. Some companies also like to know they have a �ready to move into� office location on standby as well.
The ability to get your computer files back is possibly the most critical element to consider, hence online backup is an important tool to have in place. The online backup element is crucial as if there is no access to the office you will need to be able to recover files from a remote location which is what online backup can deliver very efficiently.
The ability and speed with which an organisation can continue to communicate between staff, suppliers and customers is very important so using an emergency alert service is very useful to do this. A quick login from any computer will provide the ability to quickly be in touch as needed.
When phone lines go down or even if access to the office becomes unavailable, trading can be seamlessly continued by diverting telephone calls to a virtual switchboard.
Summary:
Making a compliant Business continuity plan helps identify potential risks, make preparations for emergencies in advance and test how these are coped with.
Using business continuity allow companies to continue trading through a crisis and to recover quickly afterwards in the best possible way.
Business continuity plans and compliance tools are a very good investment, especially when compared against the cost of a day or a week�s downtime, which could be potentially crippling.
'Your service has a very professional, yet personal feel, which is reassuring'
- Fisher Group
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