Today’s companies face a host of risks that can impact business processes and supporting technologies. These disruptions are costly – from revenue and productivity loss to customer loss and reputational harm. When these disruptions occur, the ability to continue operating seamlessly is critical. To ensure your company’s survival, it’s essential to have the following business continuity strategies in place.

Back Up Your Data

The most effective way to ensure business continuity is to back up your data regularly. Having a comprehensive data backup strategy is like having insurance for your most valuable digital assets. If any of your systems fail, become corrupted, or are inaccessible, these backups will allow you to quickly recover and minimize downtime.

When backing up your data, it’s important to consider offsite backups in addition to on-premises solutions. This will ensure that your data is safe in the event of a physical disaster, such as a fire or flood at your primary location. Additionally, cloud-based backup solutions can provide added security and accessibility for your data during times of crisis.

Enhance Continuity with Virtualization

Virtualization is the process of creating a virtual version of servers, storage devices, networks, or operating systems. Virtualization can be a game changer for your business. By consolidating your IT infrastructure and resources, you enhance business continuity through features like live migration and snapshots.

By leveraging virtualization, businesses can create an environment that replicates their critical data, applications, and processes, ensuring that they can recover quickly from disasters such as hardware failures and data breaches that may disrupt their operations. Utilizing virtual disaster recovery solutions not only enables faster recovery times, but also offers advantages such as cost-effectiveness, flexibility, and scalability.

Embrace Cloud-Based Business Continuity

The cloud is pivotal in business continuity by providing a secure and reliable platform for storing data, hosting applications, and facilitating remote access to critical resources. By adopting cloud-based strategies, businesses can minimize downtime, and mitigate risks.

Cloud solutions are crucial in helping businesses maintain continuity in disruptions. From data backup and disaster recovery to remote work enablement and enhanced security, cloud technology offers a comprehensive suite of tools and solutions to ensure resilience and agility in today’s dynamic business environment.

Implement Unified Communications

The ability to communicate without disruption is critical to not only continuing business operations, but also to ensuring the safety of your employees. Communication can be difficult when critical systems are down and each passing minute means more lost revenue or, even worse, increased risk of harm to your employees.

Unified communication (UC) creates a virtualized communication infrastructure that can greatly enhance business continuity. When all modes of communication and related data are integrated into a single platform, it becomes much easier for employees to share and receive information.

Instead of your communication tools all being stored locally at your workplace, you can access them anywhere. So, if your office is inaccessible, employees can still use your phones and other communication tools from their homes. What’s more, UC tools can route business calls to your employees’ smartphones. That means they’ll never miss an important call, even if they’re not in the office.

Have a Backup Power Supply

Electric power is one of the most important resources to protect when it comes to critical infrastructure. Power loss is something virtually every business could face at some time, and the results can be disastrous. No electricity means zero productivity and money down the drain. Having a backup power supply will ensure that when the electricity goes down, your employees can continue working.

A good solution is an uninterrupted power supply (UPS), which gives employees a fair amount of time to finish their work as if nothing ever happened. Also, if you have a server room, a UPS will ensure your vital servers stay cool.

Consider a Secondary Recovery Site

In the event a company’s primary location or systems become inaccessible due to an unforeseen event, such as a fire or data breach, operations can continue at a temporary disaster recovery site to ensure that employees can continue working until it becomes safe to resume work at the usual location. Resilient workspaces for offsite business recovery, provide an alternative to keep employees productive and your business running during unplanned disruptions.

In order to qualify as a secondary or alternative site, the location must have sufficient computing capability and space for dislocated personnel to stand in for the primary site. Logistical constraints may force operations to run at diminished capacity but set your goal at reasonable continuation of business functions.

Build Operational Resilience

When facing disruptions, businesses must adopt strategies for business continuity to maintain operations and productivity. With the right plan in place, your business will be ready to manage tomorrow’s surprises today.

PointSolve’s integrated approach helps ensure your continuity strategies are comprehensive and reliable. Our solutions enable businesses to monitor risks, automate risk assessment workflows, and function with resiliency and adaptability.

If you are looking to build a business continuity plan and would benefit from expert advice, our experienced team is always on hand to speak with you. Contact us today to find out more.