Have you thought about who should be involved in your disaster recovery plan now that you’re finally getting ready after so many years? When you have a large company, it’s not easy to coordinate every department without creating confusion. As a result, you’ve perhaps left out some people because you figure it would take too much time for meetings or preparation.
The best way to solve this is to whittle down those who should become the most involved in your disaster recovery plan. By understanding who’s the most important and what roles they play, you’ll have a better picture of how they’ll function when a real disaster happens. So who should you choose to take part? It could become a more diverse list of people than you initially figured.
Your IT Personnel
Since most of your challenges are going to involve technology, having your IT personnel in on your plan is essential. You need to thoroughly plan the steps they’ll take if your business suddenly gets destroyed in a natural or artificial cataclysm. Will they meet at a data center you have in wait? Will they understand what alternate technical roles they’ll play if having to move to another site? Consider some of the equipment they can procure like uninterruptible power supplies (UPS systems) to protect your systems from unnecessary wear and tear that dirty power brings. Also scope out who takes action on accessing your data, assuming you have a good backup plan in place.
Your Cloud Backup Provider
By setting up a data cloud backup system, you already have someone in your corner to help you quickly recover from disasters. The key is to pick a designated person (and alternates) to contact about your problem so you quickly get your data back. Contracting with data centers gives you an immediate place for reliable power and Internet service to get access to all your business information. Since you can store your entire business contents in the cloud, you’ll get things back up and running the same day.
Customer Service Representatives
You don’t want to anger your customers if your phone systems or website suddenly shut down due to a disastrous event. Your customer service reps need direct involvement in your data recovery plan to take immediate action by talking to customers to relay what’s going on. Not saying anything is deadly, and it could lead to loyal customers leaving you due to misunderstanding. Using social media and e-mail are effective methods to get customers up to speed on what’s occurring. Plan for other agents to mobilize quickly to another site so you retrieve your phone systems and resume incoming calls. Just as important (for all departments) is having added support and overflow available to fall back on if your team can’t do their jobs in a worst-case scenario.
Financial Associates
Going beyond the technical crew, you need to work with financial associates as well to make sure your e-commerce and ordering processes keep operating. Since this borders on the technical (since it relates to ordering online), they can work in tandem with the IT crew. Obviously, you want to keep the cash flow going without massive interruptions due to excessive downtime. It’s essential your financial departments have access to and keep up all records so there isn’t a sudden siphoning of money that leads to trouble later.
Contact us at Tie National, LLC so we can help you design a strategy that will prepare your company before disaster strikes.
