Insurance is a pretty bad deal — until you need it. While shelling out monthly for health insurance, car insurance, homeowner’s insurance and other disaster policies such as malpractice insurance can feel like a waste, the utility of such policies changes dramatically the second you need it.
The same is true for business continuity planning.
Roughly 93 percent of businesses that suffer more than 10 days of system downtime file for bankruptcy, according to the National Archives and Records in Washington, D.C. This is a pretty dramatic number, and it shows what can happen if a disaster strikes and no plan is in place to deal with business disruption.
So a business continuity plan makes sense just like health insurance makes sense. Many businesses are not even sure where to start when it comes to preparing such a plan, however.
There are several factors that should be considered when it comes to disaster preparation for your business.
The first is how the business will communicate with its people, whether employees and partners or customers. A phone tree should be developed, and an action plan for getting the word out about what’s going on with the business. There also should be backup communication systems. One method many businesses are leveraging is cloud-based unified communications, since these communication suites are safely in the cloud and should still be running in all but a national emergency of epic proportions.
Equipment should not be forgotten in this equation, either. If your business relies on a communications network to interface with equipment and systems in the field, it is important to have backup channels to continue interacting with these systems in case of emergency. Opengear (News - Alert) offers a wide range of out-of-band management solutions that deliver secondary communications networking in case the primary communications network between a business and its field equipment goes down.
Office space is a third factor that businesses should consider when developing a business continuity plan. If a disaster makes the office unusable for a time, have a plan for a secondary office or telecommuting so employees can work from home without too much disruption. This can also come in handy for businesses in areas that are sometimes affected by severe snow storms.
It also is important to consider key businesses processes that could be disrupted, and to have backup systems in case any business process is affected by a disaster. Make sure data and servers are backed up, and no system is reliant on a single point of potential failure.
These are some of the big issues to address when developing a business continuity plan. But the most important task is just to start a plan. Like backing up a personal computer or having health insurance, the key of keys is actually putting something into place.
Edited by Rory J. Thompson