Who (if anyone) in your business is in charge of your disaster recovery planning process?

It may not be something you have given much thought to. But it is vital that the correct people take charge of your disaster recovery planning to ensure that your plan is as effective as possible.

In many businesses, responsibility for disaster recovery planning will typically fall to the IT department. This is often because IT systems play such a vital role in business operations. It is therefore important to have a plan in place to keep IT systems running or get them back up and running as quickly as possible if they are affected by a disaster event.

But giving sole responsibility for disaster recovery planning to your IT department may not be the best solution from a business resilience perspective. 

If there are other business areas which are vital to your success, then the managers of those business units should also be involved in and responsible for specific areas of your disaster recovery plan. This could include the Finance director or HR director for example.

Those who manage a business unit will have the best, specialist knowledge of how things work and what actions must be taken to restore functionality should disaster strike.

Having people who take direct ownership for disaster recovery planning is key. However, it is also important that you gain buy in from those working at senior management levels and even up to those working at board level. Those working at this level will likely have a strategic overview of how the business works and therefore be well placed to feed into your planning. 

Having people who have specific, business unit-based knowledge, coupled with those who know the overall business is likely to give you the best chance of success when it comes to surviving the impact of a disaster.

Gaining buy in and approval at these levels will also ensure that sufficient focus is dedicated to your disaster recovery planning. This can include making sure time and effort is dedicated to training staff and that people with sufficient authority and experience are assigned to disaster recovery tasks. It can also help ensure that in the event of a disaster, you have the resources you need (financial, people, external suppliers who can support you) to act quickly and minimise business disruption and downtime.

Given the devastating impact that a disaster can have on a business, particularly if recovery is delayed or response times slow, it is not hard to understand why buy in from those at senior management level is critical to ensuring your business resilience and continuity. 

If you are reviewing your disaster recovery planning processes and are looking for a specialist supplier to support you then look no further than First Recovery.  We can provide support in the event of disaster, from relocating you to temporary offices to providing back up IT systems. For more information, contact us today.