Did you know that 40% of small businesses fail to get back on their feet after a disaster?

If your business doesn’t have a disaster recovery plan in place or an IT provider that is equipped to handle one, then you’re taking a huge risk.  Sure, in a perfect world, we wouldn’t need to worry about accidents, emergencies and other disaster scenarios that could drag your business to a halt.

Unfortunately, though, life is prone to abrupt surprises and unexpected challenges that can highly impact not only our private lives but also our businesses. Every single day, businesses across the world are faced with surprising scenarios and unpredictable circumstances that significantly affect their operations.

What kinds of disasters should my business be protected against?

There is no denying the fact that the business world is prone to different types of disasters that present themselves in one form or another: there are natural disasters like floods, hurricanes and earthquakes; human-induced disasters such as acts of terrorism and civil disturbances; and technology disasters such as cyber-attacks, data corruption, and system failures. A disaster can strike at any moment without warning. In addition, the magnitude and the impact of the disasters could be severe in any scenario. In as such, no business is immune from a disaster at some point or another.

However, if your business is in New Jersey, you can prepare for technological disasters by seeking the services of New Jersey computer service company TNTMAX.

Hurricane destroy your office? Power outages and surges damage your electronics? You’re covered, New Jersey – computer service company TNTMAX handles all of it to get your business back on track before the turnpike is even re-opened.

Despite the fact that these disasters might occur either as a result of intentional or unintentional causes, they possess some common characteristics: they highly affect business operations and they call for the establishment of a sound disaster recovery plan/ strategy. New Jersey computer service company TNTMAX helps businesses to establish quality disaster recovery plans that reduce the effects of different types of disasters.

Disaster recovery, in reference to your IT department, entails a set of guidelines that have been put in place to protect the infrastructure of a business. Disaster recovery also helps in the subsequent restoration of business data and infrastructure when a disaster strikes. It remarkably helps a business to mitigate the risks of operational disruptions that could be caused by the occurrence of disasters. Moreover, it helps the business to recover and resume operations in the shortest time possible after an unexpected event occurs.

Importance of a Disaster Recovery Plan

Ideally, the objective of a disaster recovery plan is to help businesses, both small and large corporations, to manage any challenging disasters reactively. The strategies deployed by the plans should be precautionary and actionable. They also need to be implemented in a manner that helps to protect all the elements involved in a business IT infrastructure such as:

• Important business data
• Network connectivity
• Software
• Hardware components
• Overall operating physical environments

Your disaster recovery strategy should anticipate the disruption or loss of any of the critical components of the business infrastructure and forge the best way forward of enabling the business to resume operations quickly.

If your business operates in NY or NJ, there are several benefits of seeking the services of a local New Jersey computer service company in developing a quality disaster recovery plan.  Including:

Reduce loss and business downtime

One major misconception that hinders most businesses from having a disaster recovery plan is the perception that only major disasters can potentially affect the operations of a business. In reality, smaller incidences such as workplace accidents or hardware failure can equally have significant implications in the operations of a business.

Disruption of normal business operations results in business downtime which could lead to loss of revenue.  The closer we are to your business, the faster we can get you back on track.

Any simple mistake which could potentially impact the operations of a business should be considered a disaster. The element of human error should also be perceived as a potential threat that calls for sound preparation to mitigate the effects of the error.

 

Safeguard your business’s reputation

Let’s face it. News travels fast.  Therefore, the reputation of a business can easily be damaged rather fast if disgruntled clients decide to share the news online.

Most clients are rational and will try to be supportive and understanding to a business that has been hit by a disaster while maintaining patience for a few hours.

Having a sound DR plan can help a business to utilize the few hours to restore its operations. However, without any plans, it may take time, even a few days to fix an issue, which could cause your clients to lose their patience. This can greatly ruin the reputations of a business when disgruntled clients express their dissatisfactions to the rest of the world.

Meet the expectations of your clients

The Internet has helped customers become more aware of their needs. When clients are dissatisfied with the services provided to them, they are more likely to pack it up and find another New Jersey computer service provider.

The Internet has also helped clients to demand transparency and increased perfection in the delivery of goods and services by businesses.  That is, when your customers aren’t happy, one quick post to Facebook or Yelp will tell the whole world that your company let them down.

With the increased competition among businesses in all industries, it is paramount for any business to have a sound disaster recovery plan that reduces any downtime in business operations. This helps the business to be able to continue operating normally hence increasing the trust confidence of customers.

Reduce the expenses of re-acquiring clients

You probably already know that it costs much more to acquire new clients or to re-acquire former clients than to simply retain clients. As clients become more aware of their needs and demand perfection from business enterprises, they have also grown to be less forgiving.

Therefore, a simple mistake such as a network outage could be costly in the event that a client decides to seek services to the next competitor whom they believe might provide efficient services. Having a disaster recovery plan not only helps to reduce the downtime of a business but dictates what has to be done to resume normal operations as soon as possible

Reduce losses

Preparing for the potential consequences of a disaster helps to reduce the overall liabilities that might result when the disaster occurs. The ability to immediately address the impact of a disaster and to swiftly restore operations back to normalcy helps a business to reduce the overall impact of the disaster hence limiting the liabilities that might occur.

Swift incidence response

The most devastating effect of a disaster is the initial overwhelming fear of not knowing what to do first.  The sudden occurrence of a disaster can cause a lot of confusion on how to handle and manage the situation. Confusion and even mild chaos can cripple a company.

In the end, the extent of the damage could be severe, leading to more losses of revenue. Ultimately, this could potentially lead to the collapse of a business, especially when clients decide to seek services from other New Jersey computer service providers.

Working with an IT disaster recovery company ensures that you have a team of experienced experts who know exactly how to manage a disaster step by step. They know exactly how to handle the process to minimize damage in any capacity to your work.

What are the Elements of a Good Disaster Recovery Plan?

• Analysis of potential disruptors and action plans to manage the disruptors

A sound disaster recovery plan should take into account the entire spectrum of potential threats that could disrupt business operations. As much as we know about the unpredictable weather and hurricane potential in New Jersey, computer service providers know that precedence should be given to threats that are more likely to occur such as cyber-attacks and human errors as opposed to natural catastrophes. However, this step should then help in formulating the best ways to react to the different disaster scenarios that may occur. A good DR plan should feature action plans that should be taken to handle any disaster that strikes. The ability to account for a variety of threats helps a business to identify the resources that will be needed in managing the disaster when they occur.

Furthermore, using a local company ensures that your team is absolutely aware of the most likely disasters to strike your region. For businesses in New Jersey, having a New Jersey computer service disaster recovery team based locally offer exactly that.

• Business impact analysis (BIA)

A business impact analysis is a critical tool that can help a business in determining and prioritizing the action plans required to handle and manage disasters. All the IT systems of a DR plan have to be run through the BIA to evaluate the potential effects of a disaster on the various systems.

A BIA usually evaluates three objectives that include the integrity, availability, and confidentiality of each system and hence helps in prioritizing the systems that could help in the speedy recovery of business operations after a disaster strikes.

• Allocation of roles and responsibilities

One of the most overlooked elements of a disaster recovery plan is the human workforce. Most businesses usually center their recovery strategies around systems and technology while disregarding the people involved in the business operations.

It is paramount to equip your personnel with the effective strategies of reacting and managing disasters. Additionally, having their contact information and helping them to know what should be done when a disaster strikes can decrease the downtime of a company significantly. A quality DR plan should be able to stipulate the teams that are responsible for the various processes involved in the disaster recovery processes and the responsibilities of each team member.

• Strategies Updates

A DR plan that is out of date is as useless as not having one in place. A good DR plan should capture all the essential technologies that are being presently used by a business. As technology advances at a first phase, it is also vital for a business to ensure that it does not only adopt the use of the new technologies and systems but also to ensure that the disaster recovery plan is up to date with the advances in technology. Therefore, any changes made to the business infrastructure should be reflected in the DR plan.

• Activation of the plans

The different systems and technologies reflected in a DR plan have varying levels of importance and urgency when managing disasters. A good DR plan should be able to identify and prioritize the systems involved according to their importance in enabling a business to resume its operations as quickly as possible. Then the action plan involved in enabling a business to resume operations should be activated effectively to enable swift restoration of the business infrastructure.

• Regular tests

For a DR plan to be effective, it is important to schedule regular drills. The drills help to test whether the DR plan would be suitable when managing an unexpected disaster. It also helps the teams involved to be aware of how they should handle a disaster efficiently. Running tests helps to detect any inadequacies, technical issues, misleading assumptions and other inconsistencies that might be present in a plan. The gaps identified must be fixed to improve the effectiveness of the DR plan. Drills are also critical in determining how fast a disaster can be managed hence help in reducing the overall downtime which could result when a disaster strikes.

Businesses Should Always Be Prepared to Manage Disasters

Most businesses, especially small businesses, have a tendency of dismissing disaster recovery services as a critical requirement that should be reserved for larger corporations. Sure, big corporations might require complex and comprehensive disaster recovery plans. However, it is also true that smaller businesses are equally prone and less likely to survive disasters because of unpreparedness. Therefore, it is prudent for smaller businesses to stop downplaying the probability of importance of disaster recovery services. Businesses can take advantage of business interruption insurance plans which complements disaster recovery services in helping businesses to respond and manage disaster effectively in minimal time.

It would be a big mistake for a business to wait until a disaster strikes in before figuring out what should be done next.

Don’t let your business be one of the 40% that never re-opens its doors after disaster strikes.

New Jersey computer service company TNTMAX is here to help any Garden State businesses in developing a quality disaster recovery plan.