When it comes to creating a disaster recovery plan would you know where to start? It can seem like a daunting task to even the most organised of business owners. That’s why at First Recovery we aim to make things as simple as possible for you. As part of our specialist disaster recovery service, we supply our customers with access to BRIO (Business Recovery Information Online) – an online disaster recovery planning tool.
The BRIO system will provide you with all of the tools and assistance you need to develop a disaster recovery plan – and it can be achieved in less than an hour.
Here we look at how you go about using BRIO, the five simple steps and the types of information you’ll need to input:
Step One: Register your business and users
As a First Recovery customer it couldn’t be simpler to set up your access to BRIO – simply enter your personal and company details on the BRIO login page on our website. Once registered and logged in you will find the homepage from where you can manage all areas of your account.
As the person that registers your business with BRIO, you will see your details under the registered user’s section. From here you can add further users who work for your small business and who will be using the BRIO system. There is no limit to the number of users you can add.
When adding users’ details, it’s important to add detail around their work function e.g. Marketing, IT, Finance etc. Its key to add this information as it helps with one of BRIO’s key features – the ability to determine what information you staff see.
You can also assign access levels – either ‘Admin’ which means the user can change things within the account or ‘View’ which means they can only view the information in BRIO.
Step Two: Adding your business locations
The next section is referred to as ‘Add Sites’. This allows you to add the sites or premises of your business to which you want your disaster recovery plan to apply. Again, there is no limit to the number of sites that you can add.
You can also add additional information if you choose such as the software that you operate out of the site (e.g Windows 7, Office Pro 2010), your Internet Service Provider, Email service provider, and hardware information such as number of servers and workstations at the site.
Adding this information will mean it is all to hand when you login to the BRIO site and can help inform any recovery centre requirements which we may supply as your disaster recovery specialists.
Step Three: Creating your disaster recovery plan
The next stage is to start creating your disaster recovery plan. Simply click add and this takes you to version 1.0 of your plan. You will then see a number of text boxes with headings all pertaining to the details relevant to creating your disaster recovery plan.
Each element of the plan provides you with examples of the type of information that may be useful or relevant to add. Copy and paste from an existing plan or simply type in new information if this is your first plan.
There are 14 sections which come as standard with the BRIO tool as well as a number of empty text boxes towards the end into which you can add any business specific information which isn’t covered by BRIO as standard.
The more detail that you can add to each section the better – the information that you add to each box is that which will be distributed to your staff in an emergency situation. It’s therefore important to be very clear and direct to ensure that key staff know what will be expected of them from the information you supply.
The areas you will need to consider as part of your plan are:
This is also where you can determine what information your staff and business functions see. This is achieved by selecting the job functions you specified when you added your users – only tick the functions that you want the information you have just entered to be visible to. This means staff will only see information that is relevant to them or for which they are responsible.
Step Four: Using the BRIO App
As well as being able to access the BRIO site from the First Recovery website, BRIO also has a mobile app which you can download so that you and your staff are always able to access your disaster recovery plan, at any time, wherever you are.
You never know when disaster may strike so the last thing you want having spent time and effort putting together your disaster recovery plan is to not have it to hand when you really need it. BRIO puts these concerns to rest – as long as you have your mobile with you, you will be able to access it.
Step Five: Readiness Questionnaire
Optional but a good place to get a handle on how your business is likely to fare if faced with a disaster. This questionnaire asks a range of questions aimed at testing the resilience of your business to a disaster. Once you have answered the questions (simple yes or no answers) your business will be given a percentage score showing how ready you are to face and overcome disaster. After this you will be provided with an action plan based upon your responses, providing help and guidance around each of the issues, including how BRIO can help you address any areas which may affect your resilience.
At First Recovery we specialise in providing small and medium sized businesses with specialist disaster recovery services. The BRIO system is just one of many benefits we offer to our customers. So if you’d like to have a specialist by your side in the event of a disaster then get in touch with us today to see how we can help.