Why Disaster Recovery Planning Shouldn’t Be Hard Work

Posted By on September 10th, 2019

To many businesses the thought of putting together a disaster recovery plan ca be a daunting one. Particularly to small businesses. You may think you don’t have the resources to allocate to the creation of a plan. Or feel that financial restrictions limit your capacity to put together a robust plan.

All in all disaster recovery planning can simply feel like hard work. After all, chances are you won’t be affected by a disaster. Right?

Wrong. Disaster can strike any business at any time. It could be as innocuous as a burst pipe which damages stock or renders your IT systems out of action for a prolonged period of time. Or an unexpected act of vandalism which means you have to close down your premises whilst you clear up. Not all disasters are headline hitting. But they can hit your businesses bottom line. Particularly if you haven’t planned ahead and have to make things up as you go along when it comes to recovery.

At First Recovery we can’t reiterate enough the importance of ensuring that you plan ahead. Having an effective disaster recovery plan in place can make a real difference to whether your business comes out the other side when hit by disaster. In fact figures from gov.uk suggest that as many as half of businesses who suffer a disaster and have no effective recovery plans in place, fail within the following 12 months.

The process of putting one in place shouldn’t be hard work either. If you do not feel able to tackle something on your own, you can always look to a third party for support, such as that offered by First Recovery.

When it comes to disaster recovery planning, breaking down the steps you need to take can help.

Some of the key steps you will need to take include:

• Take time to review the possible threats which may affect your business – e.g. fire, flood, theft, vandalism

• Consider the steps you would need to take to respond to such disasters

• This information should be formally written down in a plan. The exact nature and complexity of your plan will likely be determined by the size of your business. At First Recovery we offer all of our customer’s access to the BRIO system. An online disaster recovery planning tool. It breaks down the task of writing a plan and provides a template of key information to include, simplifying the whole process.

• A priority should be placed on training key staff in the details of your plan. As well as carrying out testing of key elements to ensure that what you have written down on paper works in practice.

Remember that failure to prepare and create an effective plan can leave not only your business at risk but also your employees and your customers. Planning ahead makes good sense when it comes to your business survival.

At First Recovery we offer specialist disaster recovery and continuity services. We can get you back up and running in a temporary office 24 hours after a disaster strikes. We also have a great deal of experience in disaster recovery planning and aim to make the process as simple as possible for our customers through provision of the BRIO system. If you have any questions about our services then don’t hesitate to get in touch with us today.