Disaster Recovery Planning updates

Hello,

Welcome back to our Disaster Recovery / Business Continuity Planning Blog.

Last time I gave you some reasons for keeping up with this Blog. Let's see if I can hold your interest.

Looks like the 50,000 foot view of the land of Business Continuity Planning will have to wait until next time. Before I get into that I have to tell you, I hate jargon. I'll be the first to admit that doesn't mean I don't use it but in this Blog I will explain any jargon that I use. And, I want you to feel free to call me on it if I don't make something clear.

So I'll take a step back and explain some terms I threw out last time.

Business Interruption Insurance: When a disaster strikes your business location, the location may be temporarily unusable. Your business will not be producing income and may continue to incur fixed costs (rent, utilities, etc.). Standard property insurance does not cover the loss of income caused by the temporary closure of the business. Business Interruption Insurance can provide coverage for:
· The costs and expenses incurred by your business even though the location is unusable.
· Costs incurred in having to move and operate from a temporary location.
· “Extra expenses” that may be incurred by keeping the location open.
Business interruption insurance is probably the most valuable coverage your business can have. It is also coverage that is frequently overlooked by businesses. This is because it is easy to forget that income cannot be produced without an operating business or the business owner believes property insurance will cover all losses. Of course you will want to review your needs with your agent to ensure you are appropriately insured. Is Business Interruption Insurance part of your Business Continuity Plan? Yes it is!!

Crisis management is the process by which an organization deals with a major unpredictable event that threatens to harm the organization, its stakeholders, or the general public. Three elements are common to most definitions of crisis: (a) a threat to the organization, (b) the element of surprise, and (c) a short decision time.
In contrast to risk management, which involves assessing potential threats and finding the best ways to avoid those threats, crisis management involves dealing with threats after they have occurred. It is a discipline within the broader context of management consisting of skills and techniques required to identify, assess, understand, and cope with a serious situation, especially from the moment it first occurs to the point that recovery procedures start. Is Crisis Management part of your Business Continuity Plan? Yes it is!!

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a broadly recognized, widely-implemented strategy for managing and nurturing a company’s interactions with customers, clients and sales prospects. It involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize business processes—principally sales activities, but also those for marketing, customer service, and technical support. The overall goals are to find, attract, and win new clients, nurture and retain those the company already has, entice former clients back into the fold, and reduce the costs of marketing and client service. Is CRM part of your Business Continuity Plan? It is if you are using any type of CRM strategy in your business!!

IT disaster recovery plan is the documented plan that contains the process, policies and procedures related to preparing for recovery or continuation of technology infrastructure critical to an organization after a natural or human-induced disaster. Is Disaster Recovery Planning part of your Business Continuity Plan? Assuming you use any sort of computer or telephony based technology, yes it is!!

Your File Backup and Recovery Program ensures that you not only have backups of your data taken at appropriate times but also verifies your ability to restore files from backup. An enhancement to the File Backup and Recovery Program is storage of a copy of your backups at an offsite location so they are available if your primary location were destroyed.

I'm almost out of space for today. I want to leave you with one more piece of information concerning Business Continuity Planning. This effort can be as big or as small as you want to make it. You can make it one big project or a series of smaller ones. If you are willing to review business processes at the same time you develop your Business Continuity Plan you will almost always find ways to improve efficiency, save time or money. So, although nothing is free, sometimes you can achieve more than the planned benefits.

If you run a business that makes use of computers or data and you need help with Backup and Recovery, IT Disaster Recovery or Business Continuity Planning... pick up the phone and call 226-220-0472, we can help you.

Fred Spitzig