Tiffany R. Welch Blog's

Importance of Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plan for the Business

A business or a company would have a hard time recovering from a natural calamity or disaster without a good continuity and disaster plan. Operations should be resumed immediately even through power failures, system crashes or other disasters that could affect the business. Planning a disaster recovery could be beneficial for the business to be prepared for any disruptive events. This would minimize delays and hindrance in manufacturing. It is recommended that every large establishment should have a recovery plan. People often ignore this and mark it as lease priority, since it seems like an unlikely event to occur. They do not realize how big it could influence the business.

The continuity process is a comprehensive approach to keep generating cash even through times of disaster or departure of key employees. The business should not be crippled and should have a “plan B” for operation.  The plans usually include how to communicate and how to continue doing each employees job. For IT companies, backups and system recovery is a relevant part of the business. These contain all the information and data that the employees are working on, so therefore it should have a back up or emergency rescue in times of distress. Business impact analysis should be conducted to determine the essential parts of keeping the company running.

In times of emergency or distress, employers should train their employees to perform emergency task. They may set up an evacuation plan and fire brigade team to counter some major emergency during operation. This is a systematic approach to keep the company running. If employees are well trained and informed about how to deal with this circumstances then it would be easier to save vital parts, system, or back up of company data. They should be provided with equipments to be able to do this emergency plans. Good communication and organization on how to evacuate or counter fire should be relayed. Investing in alternate means of communication such as cb radios, and cb radio would be beneficial in case the primary means are temporary down. Training them with professionals in the field of rescue could avoid panic and lost of lives. All employees should be involved in the exercises so that they would know how to correctly respond to a certain emergency. Doing realistic exercises could help you analyze the scenarios on how employees would react in a certain situation. This could help you prepare for it, thus reducing damage and other loses. It is also important to continuously test the continuity plan to be able to check its effectiveness. You should make necessary adjustment if needed.

Companies should not ignore a continuity plan for it might prove beneficial in the end. They should invest in it since this could help the company running even through times of trouble. They should have a constant awareness on how to effectively retain operation even through this crisis. Disasters could happen to everybody so companies might as well be prepared rather than feel sorry at the end for not developing a continuity and Disaster recovery plan.