It’s always good to be prepared, that’s what the Boy Scouts say after all, and we agree. Whether you live and work in an area prone to floods or hurricanes or not, many emergencies pop up without your control. It is essential to get ahead of the game – to be prepared! You’ll find this preparedness is vital for all businesses – regardless of industry or size.
All disasters are different, so having a one-size-fits-all plan is tricky. Still, many elements are common to all emergencies and should be considered for a general disaster recovery plan. An obvious benefit to having a natural disaster recovery plan is ensuring your business operations can continue, regardless of the disaster.
Here Are Our Top 5 Benefits of a Disaster Recovery Plan:
Minimize the Cost
Disaster recovery plans cover essential elements such as measures to reduce the risk of human-made disasters taking place, identifying unwanted events and creating steps for a business to continue straight after a disaster.
Having all of these set in place will minimize the cost of a disaster and ensure business continues as usual as quickly as possible.
Understanding Roles
When employees know and understand their role in your natural disaster recovery plan, they will be useful in carrying out their tasks, and there will be less panic. In other words, there will be a fluid, well-run disaster recovery scenario.
Customer Retention
Customers want things running smoothly at all times; their expectations of businesses are high. And, if you don’t meet their expectations, they will quickly move on. A good disaster recovery plan will allow your business to maintain its high service quality while keeping its customers happy.
Data and Information Planning
Being innovative in how you will solve emergencies is key to a good disaster recovery plan. For example, learning about Cloud-based options for managing and storing your company’s data offers the flexibility of having important information and data ready for your employees so work can carry on, regardless of what may be happening to your business property.
Management of Assets
With thorough documentation of your assets, you can make smart decisions on what spare equipment can be used, where to find equipment, and how to proceed with possible off-site working possibilities.
Guidelines for Creating a Disaster Recovery Plan:
Understanding the value and benefits of a disaster recovery plan is one thing, but what are the best practices for creating a good natural disaster recovery plan?
- Know Your Risks
Understand your environment and make a plan listing the types of emergencies you are likely to face. Once you have a list, you can figure out what resources you will need to face these risks.Make sure you create detailed response tasks for the most likely scenarios and don’t waste too much time and money on the unlikely ones.
- Build a Team
Put a team together to come up with your emergency plan; don’t only have one person working on it. Different people are likely to bring other areas of expertise to the problem and will help you create the most effective disaster recovery plan.And, don’t forget to communicate your plan to all involved, so they have a good understanding of their role when a disaster occurs. - Accessible Information
Ensure your natural disaster recovery plan is easy and quick to understand and follow. You don’t want an old, dusty binder that will take an hour to read through. Be concise, list the threat, the risk, and actions that are needed.You can have supporting notes too that are perhaps long and drawn out, but in terms of reaching for the plan as an emergency is happening, you want something quick to read and easily accessible. - Regular Updates
Emergencies seem to be a lot more complicated these days and require a little more knowledge than just calling the police or pulling a fire alarm. That’s why having a plan is so important; there’s no need to second guess – you can easily follow the outlined steps.Ensure you are continually updating and re-looking at your procedures for new emergencies and best practices on how you communicate a threat to those involved. - Training
You will also need to ensure your disaster recovery plan works. Plan a series of drills and exercises that will lead those involved through the procedures they are expected to know. This will also enable you to make any necessary tweaks to the plan.
How We Can Help
Blackmon Mooring & BMS CAT offer the Priority Disaster Response Program (PDRP), where we work with our customers to develop an emergency response plan. We discuss and identify priorities for your company, perform a property walkthrough, set expectations, and outline procedures to follow should a disaster occur.
Our Response Service Agreement, which is a non-binding agreement, allows us to pre-define pricing and determine how we will work together before a loss.
The PDRP allows us to provide a better overall experience for our customers should a disaster strike, because all the red tape is taken care of already.
We have a plan going into a loss, we know how we will handle the loss, and we can get to work quickly because we are all on the same page before our crews even arrive on-site.
To learn more about the PDRP, visit our website or call 877-899-0676