By Tanuja A Akkannavar
Disaster! You can call it a nightmare or the biggest fear of every businessman. A Disaster can knock out or destroy the entire business of a firm within a short span of time. Any disaster may occur like floods, hurricane, thunderstorm, wildfire, or technical disasters like crashing of the system or losing data, which can close a company for a period of time or permanently. More than 25 percent of start-ups and small scale business fail to reopen after facing a big disaster and most of such companies are not prepared with any disaster recovery plan to reopen the business.
Most of the prominent companies in the market are well prepared with a plan to face disaster recovery of the business, for example, Maggi Noodles was banned for a decent period of time and the product was completely taken off from the market, but the Nestle India re-launched the product with excellent marketing strategies which helped the brand in regaining its top position in the market. Today, the trends in the market are changing every day and to cope up with the future disasters, every company should have an effective disaster recovery plan ready for a smooth running of their business.
Following are a few steps that help in creating an effective disaster recovery plan for your business –
1. Evaluate the Risk Factors –
Once a company is established or it is stable in the market, you have to evaluate the risk causing factors that may lead to disasters. Identify each and every aspect that can affect the business and the reasons for such emergencies. An owner or the Director of a business should be aware of all the threats his/her company might face in the future.
2. Design the levels of tolerance –
After evaluating the factors that may cause disaster, design the levels of tolerance for each disaster. For example, if you lose the data or the system has crashed than find out the Recovery Time Objective (RTO), the maximum time you need to restart the affected system or application. Recovery Point Objective (RPO), the maximum amount of data you can afford before the major harm occurs to a company. By having a recovery plan according to these two factors you can solve the technical issues in a short time.
3. Prepare Backup Plans –
Having examined the elements that may create a disaster, a company should work on the backup plans that will help to run the business. By having the backup plans the companies can avoid closing the business for a period of time or permanently, it will help a firm sustain until the disaster recovery is completed.
4. Create effective disaster recovery plans-
The important element in the disaster recovery plan is protecting a company with insurance plans. Most of the times the companies fail in re-establishing a company is due to heavy loss which cannot be regained, they go bankrupt or will not be having enough investment to make the business stand again. Also, a company should have backup software which can regain the lost data. Therefore, by having effective disaster recovery plans a company may re-establish itself without facing many difficulties.
By regularly reviewing the disaster causing factors, it is easy for a company to create effective disaster recovery plans. The disaster recovery plans will help the companies in rebuilding their position in the market and stand strong for a long time.