Any interruption to your business could cost you dearly; in terms of lost revenue, reputation, and respect within the industry for failing to plan for such an event. It could even threaten the survival of your business in terms of decreased business productivity and invoicing.
There are many possible events that can constitute a crisis and have a severe impact on your business operations. From natural occurrences such as flood, fire, rain or storm damage to man-made disasters such as theft, vandalism or loss of key staff; and then there are external threats such as acts of terrorism, supplier crisis or national financial crisis.
A data crisis, while it might not appear to be as dramatic as these other forms of crisis, can be one of the most impactful interruption to your business. Does your business have a plan to survive a data loss or a strategy to ensure any data crisis doesn’t cost you your business?
Once you’ve identified the risk and impact that data loss could have on your business, key is to take appropriate steps to how you can minimise the impact of the risk.
Business Continuity Management provides a planned approach to the recovery of a business which has been affected by a business interruption and can help minimise the impact on employees, customers and reputation.
So what is the best way for a business to protect against a data crisis and still have access to business critical files and information?
Cloud storage is changing the face of data protection and disaster recovery, however cloud storage is not necessarily a records management system, it simply allows you to store your records. More robust records management systems are developed over many years experience in understand how records need to be accessed and a lot of time is spent in ensuring easy retrieval of information in a logical and easy to use manner.
Essentially, the cloud’s core function is storage, while document management’s core function is organisation, operation, and preservation.
In choosing the level of importance to place on document storage and data retrieval, ask yourself one thing – can I afford to lose those documents? For most businesses, the answer is no; information and records are key to delivering for customers and suppliers.
The function of an information management system is to deliver efficient and time sensitive access to information, allowing for files of any type to be stored and easily retrieved. A good information management system also facilitates workflow and collaboration, with documents and information being able to be updated in real time by multiple users.
