Swift Recovery

July 2020

Swift Recovery: Disaster Recovery Plans and Why You Need Them

If there’s one thing that we can learn from the still ongoing pandemic, it’s that no amount of planning can fully prepare any business for unprecedented adversity and disasters. However, it’s important to have a plan in place for any kind of disaster your business may face. Why? Because the speed at which your business recovers from a disaster could make all the difference between said recovery and never bouncing back.

Of course, not every disaster your business faces will be a global pandemic. Some localised disasters will happen specifically around or within your business, so it’s best to be prepared.

 

What is a Disaster Recovery Plan?

In all honesty, it’s exactly what it sounds like! This is the strategy that’s going to help get you back on your feet in the event of an IT disaster or systems breach. It’ll help you to address the issue with clients, safeguard your data and ensure that work continues as normal once the disaster has passed. The plan should be something that’s clear and easy to quickly trigger if the time comes.

The clue is really in the name, a disaster recovery plan is exactly what it sounds like. Essentially, a disaster recovery plan is a roadmap back to safety for your business, so you don’t have to wing it.

Like any aspect of growing your business, a disaster recovery plan is a strategy. This strategy, rather than targeting growth, is going to help your business swiftly bounce back from troubling times, such as a data breach or IT breakdown.

 

What should a Disaster Recovery Plan Cover?

Your disaster recovery plan should be clear and easy to trigger, so there’s no delay in enacting it when the time comes. Ideally, the three clear points should be covered in the event of a disaster:

  • Reassure clients
  • Minimise damage
  • Recover to business as normal quickly

You should create a plan that addresses all of these three aims, with room to adapt to specific disasters. This could include things like draft e-mails to clients that explain what’s happening, relevant details to contact your IT provider in the event of an emergency and instructions for backing up data. Remember when reassuring clients to be transparent, as this goes a long way to maintaining trust with your business. 

 

Ensure Your Disaster Recovery Plan is implemented swiftly

In the unfortunate event you need to implement a disaster recovery plan, it’s important to ensure that everyone involved is on the same page and clear on their role in recovery. This will limit the amount of time required to implement your plan and get your business on its way back to normal faster.

So, it’s worth identifying which members of your team will need to be trained on disaster recovery specifically, based on the control they have over procedures within your business. Ensure they understand the importance of the plan and their role within it. As part of this training, be sure to include some exercises, play out some emergency scenarios and ask your team how they would handle recover within your recovery plan. This may prove to be a great learning experience on both ends, as you identify gaps in your disaster recovery plan.

It’s crucial to ensure that you not only have a business recovery plan, but that everyone is trained in it and how to enact it.

 

Everyone Should Have A Disaster Recover Plan, We Do!

We have our own disaster recovery plan, here at Lunar. We’re responsible for our client’ data with our bespoke CRM offering, and we do everything we can to guarantee no downtime in our service. However, we can’t predict every adversity and sometimes there might be a moment of downtime. So, we take our responsibility to your seriously, and have a swift recover plan that’ll get you back online in no time if anything ever does happen.

Disasters can happen to any business, and they can really make or break your business without a disaster recovery plan in place. Your plan doesn’t have to be incredibly complicated, or difficult to draw up – so long as you have some kind of plan in place that can be adapted to different disasters, your business is all set to recover from any disaster.

Looking for a bespoke CRM solution that will help you speedily recover from any disaster? Get in touch with Lunar CRM to discuss how our tailored solutions can help your business in any situation.