Do You Have a Data Backup and Disaster Recovery Plan?

What is a Data Backup and Disaster Recovery Plan?

Imagine what would happen to your business if you suddenly lost the key data, records and documents needed for your day-to-day business. Unless you had a backup and disaster recovery plan, your business would probably come to a grinding stop!  Are you prepared?

 

The Danger of Technology Failure

Just think about how hard your job can be when you’re having problems with your smartphone or laptop. Now imagine you’ve lost your data, or your email, maybe your phone system. Documents, sales orders, billing, customer support…GONE!

 

How much business would you lose for every hour, or worse, day without this essential information or key services? How would this impact your business? This is a key element of designing a disaster recovery plan. First, you need to prioritize:

 

  • Recovery Point Objective (RPO) – What data do you need to regain access quickly in order to continue or resume operations? While you don’t want to lose any data, older archival records may not be critical to operations.
  • Recovery Time Objective (RTO) – How quickly do you need to regain access? Within a day? An hour? Less?

 

Protecting Your Paper Information

A recent IDC study found that 58% of businesses still rely on paper records. The problem with paper is that the processes most heavily reliant on hardcopy documents are the ones that would be most disrupted by a loss. In order to be effective, a disaster recovery plan needs to address this issue. Fortunately, it has become much easier to convert your critical paper documents into a digital format.

 

Along with your technical and hardcopy plan, consider the non-technical side:

 

  • Do you keep a list of key phone numbers and email addresses offsite?
  • Do you have a procedure for notifying customers and partners when an incident may impact them directly?
  • Have your employees been thoroughly trained on what to do in the event of a crisis?

 

Backup and disaster recovery plans should be a part of an overall document management program. Data loss and outages happen! Let us help you to design a backup and disaster recovery plan for your business. Give us a call today!

 

Are you wondering how other SMBs are keeping their data safe?  Take our SMB Office Challenge today and find out how you compare!

 

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