Disaster Recovery Journal

Each year as winter gets closer our customers start to think about winter weather and how it will impact their business (if you are one of the lucky ones in the south, pray for a warm winter and no snow!).  We are asked the same thing every year “How can we protect our business better?”.  While this is a valid question, there are lots of other factors to take into account.  First and foremost what is a disaster?  Second, How does it differ from a disruption?

As anyone who monitors news sources knows, British Petroleum (BP) has taken a beating in the media since the April 20^th explosion that led to eleven deaths and hundreds of millions of gallons of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico.  While the latest effort to cap the well appears effective, the perception associated with BP's reactive "by the seat of our pants" response effort failed to restore feelings of goodwill and faith, which will most likely lead to a continuation of boycotts, lawsuits and market-share loss. 

While the H1N1 pandemic seems to have passed, at least from the evening news, there is still some planning that needs to be done. Not just for companies but for regions and medical services as well.

When you think of disaster what do you think of? Chances are you put flood, massive power outage, fire, and pandemic at the top of your list. These are all events that really we can't control - the hurricanes are going to happen, the power does go out, fires happen sometimes due to human error, and health crisis are still one of the large mysteries of life. So for these events that may or may not happen, you understand the need to have a disaster recovery and business continuity plan. Since you're reading this blog post, I assume you have such a DR/BCP in place to keep your business working efficiently when "disaster" strikes. 

Is business continuity planning something that you need to do during an economic downturn? Or is this a "nice to have" that can be put on the back-burner and looked at when the economy picks-up?

The Business Continuity Plan for most companies has taken a long time to develop and consumed numerous resources, in dollars and staff time. It is maintained regularly with updated contact lists and team members are required to sign-off that they have read the plan and understand it. The plan document sits in a big red binder on every manager's office and people even have copies at home.

But, could it actually be used during an emergency to bring the company back to an operational status?

You say you already understand your business; you started it many years ago or have been its CEO for a long time. You have been involved in its growth and prosperity. What can a Business Continuity Program tell you that you don't already know?

Because you have been so close to the business and because it has grown, you may not be actually seeing what is really there.