There’s an old saying in engineering that’s known as the “Seven Ps”: Prior proper planning prevents piss poor performance. Basically, it means that if you haven’t thought out and planned for incidents before they happen, then you will be an ineffective resource manager while it happens. That’s why you have to get ahead of it.
You want to put yourself in a position that when a situation occurs where business continuity is required, you know exactly what needs to happen. Everything should be preplanned so that you’re literally executing off of a run book that tells you exactly what to do.
Think about this: Whether it’s as simple as remote access for users during a snow storm or, a more complicated situation, such as your organization’s data center and business operations are now in a sink hole, you need to be prepared and have a way to run your business temporarily.
In most companies, associates’ and management’s jobs require them to be in the office all day, every day. And, until they are forced to be out of the office without the ability to run the business, no one but you is thinking about how to keep things going. It is critical that you are on top of this as if a business is shut down for even a few days, it could mean the end of the company. In fact, 80% of businesses affected by a major incident either never re-open or close within 18 months (Source: AXA Insurance).
You should be anticipating all of the important information you need at your fingertips and the things that need to happen in various types of situations, including such things as:
– Emergency contacts
– Notification network
– Staff roles and responsibilities
– Teams and plans for your network, applications, data, restoration, IT systems, communications, remote connectivity and more
This type of planning is what we want our customers to have in place ahead of time. The last thing you want to happen is for the disaster to hit, and then ask, “Now what do I do?” Get ahead of it.
If you aren’t certain what should be included in your Disaster Recovery Plan, or don’t know how to get started, download a free copy of the CTG Disaster Recovery Plan Template by clicking here.