Blog

In 2023 a lesson for small Businesses is to be prepared. Were you impacted by the recent Optus outage? 

You never know what challenge may present itself and you can’t predict 'unplanned' events. Natural disasters, hackers, technology failures, power outages, human error or a pandemic if you are a small Business you are vulnerable and exposed. No one is safe from such threats!   

Are you ready?

This isn’t about being a doomsday sayer or pessimistic thoughts, it's about adopting sound Business thinking, logic and practices. 

Disasters do happen as we have just experienced with the cyber security breaches and technology breakdowns!

Are you one of the many Businesses affected, did you lose valuable business, time and money! And not to forget the essential emergency services out of action.

The learning from this disaster is that every Business needs to have a backup Plan, the go-to Plan B for when Business as usual’ isn’t that!

I don't need to tell you that when your Business ‘goes down’ so do your sales and revenue, your livelihood!

This is where your Back-up Plan kicks in! It allows you to continue to function with minimal disruption to look after your customers and to maintain relationships, reputation and brand image. Taking care of Business is taking care of you and your most valued asset, your clients.

If you are a Small Business owner it's critical you have a well-defined Backup and Recovery Plan in place, ready to access in times of ‘disasters’. When Plan A fails you have Plan B!

Why a Backup Plan

With todays reliance on technology as the means for doing most Business activities and transactions it is vital that systems are available at all times. Whether retail, hospitality, Industry, factory or administration most Businesses operate using electronics.   

Image! What if there is an intense fire in your building, or extensive flooding, not to mention IT systems failure or malware attacks. Blackouts, systems are down causing confusion and likely chaos, not to mention lost business and unhappy customers and clients.

Smart Businesses have contingencies in place, a Plan B, Recovery and Backup systems that save data, protect it and make it readily available without extensive delay when a crisis occurs.

How - to Develop a Solutions Strategy

To develop a Backup Plan starts by identifying your Businesses requirements.

• Considerations include: critical needs to exist, Mission-critical to operate or Optimal for performance. 
• Features to consider include: what has to be backed, restore flexibility, ease of use and backup access.
• Data: consider types of backup such as differential, incremental or full backup. Layer the protection accordingly
• Where data is stored, backed up. USB, local onsite or remote, Cloud offsite storage environment.

There is a lot to think about when creating your Plan. If needed seek advice from a professional service.

Thoughts to ponder

Small Businesses were forced to learn some very hard lessons from the COVID pandemic, specifically, about how quickly things can change, regardless of how well they were going previously. Many were impacted negatively in someway, while some others never survived.

Lessons learned include the need for attention to Systems protection, staffing flexibility and locational operational alternatives to mitigate, counter or avoid complete chaos.

Going forward, applying what was learned from that experience includes, being prepared and never taking things for granted.  These sentiments are basic elements when forming your Backup and Recovery Plan.