If a natural disaster were to hit your area, preventing your employees from making it into your physical location, how would you keep business processes moving? At the same time, what if key systems in your office are impacted by the natural disaster? Business continuity planning helps you think through scenarios like these and create a plan so that your company can continue uninterrupted, even in the event of a widespread disaster.
Many companies don’t prioritize business continuity planning, but it would be hard to identify an organization that is shielded completely from the possibility of any natural disaster. The biggest threat to your business doesn’t even come from hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes; much more likely than a flood or a fire are the possibilities of data deletion or failure to password protect a mobile device.
Here are four reasons your company should invest in business continuity planning:
Downtime will cost you. If you’ve never calculated the cost per hour of having your systems down and employees idle, that may be why you haven’t prioritized business continuity. Once you do a quick analysis of your downtime costs, you’ll find that it’s a good investment to set up a plan.
Traditional back-up is not enough. If you’re still running backup on tapes and storing them in a vault, it’s time to upgrade your backup efforts. Backing up your data in the cloud is a smart strategy because it offers geographical diversity and the provider will offer you clear information about how long it will take to restore your data. Using a cloud server means the interruption to your business will be minimal.
Most disasters aren’t natural. From cyber threats to an employee that bypasses a data backup because the process is cumbersome, there are dangers to your business that you will never see reported on the news. A business continuity plan helps you identify all the potential areas of risk and develop action plans that can be quickly executed once the problem is identified.
Business continuity planning impacts your customers. You may have considered the cost of downtime, but what about the cost to your reputation? The lost sales are one aspect of business continuity, but you should also consider the cost of replacing lost customers and the damage to your reputation and credibility. A good plan will ensure your customers never detect any interruption in service. When you conduct an initial risk assessment, be sure to include all costs, including the cost of a frustrated customer.
If you’ve been putting off business continuity planning, contact us at Truth Comm. We can help you identify the right cloud backup provider for your disaster recovery needs and guide you through the process of developing a reliable plan for handling any threat to your business.