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How much does downtime cost your business?

Answer : Always Too Much !!

While the true cost of downtime will inevitably vary by business size,sector and the nature of operations, the consequences will always be the same. When systems go down, customer service, reputation and profitability are all put at risk.

STEP 1: Determine what’s critical

Are you fully prepared for any situation? Take into account your operations, staff and systems, and ask yourself the following:

• What would happen if there was a power cut?
• What would happen if the internet went offline?
• What would happen if a natural disaster struck?
• What would happen if key staff were unavailable?

STEP 2: Prevent, protect and detect

The best way to protect your business against disaster is building ‘business as usual’ resilience. To ensure voice availability 24/7, you can put the following preventative measures in place:

• Modernise your tools
• Use an inbound call manager
• Build a resilient infrastructure
• Use analytics for insight
• Make a plan for flexible working

STEP 3 : Plan and communicate

For your disaster recovery plan, it’s important to define the key roles and responsibilities that backup personnel will play. This needs to be communicated to the whole organisation, and account for the possible lack of telephone or internet availability.Key questions to consider:

• Who will officially declare the disaster to the organisation?
• Who will activate the voice disaster recovery systems?
• Who will notify suppliers, vendors and customers?
• How will the disaster recovery team be contactable?
• Who is the ‘fallback contact’ if key disaster recovery personnel are unavailable?

When things go wrong, clear communication will be critical in ensuring processes are being followed as planned. This will prevent panic among stakeholders, and ensure that recovery is carried out efficiently.

STEP 4: Test, Test Then Test Again

Full disaster recovery testing is important, but despite this, only a minority of businesses test their plans regularly. This worrying attitude towards risk can mean businesses only realise if their plans work during an actual incident of disaster.

FINAL STEP : Talk to Albion Business

When it comes to disasters, not everything is out of your control.