How much does Business Continuity matter when hiring an IT Service Provider?

The year 2017 saw natural disasters of an unprecedented scale. As our world continues to address the widespread devastation of hurricanes, earthquakes, and wildfires, it has become evident that, unfortunately, so much is irreplaceable. For businesses with a solid business continuity strategy however, this shouldn’t be the case. On the heels of a natural disaster, businesses are forced to reckon with the adequacy of their data recovery and systems. But what if recovery wasn't even a reality? In a perfect world, businesses would take precautions when hiring their IT service provider to ensure that their continuity plans made their systems as resilient as possible, with the ability to weather any natural - or virtual - storm. 

Failure to Recover Swiftly = Failure to Stay in Business

When it comes to business continuity planning, even the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) offers a comprehensive guide to Continuity of Operations Planning for Businesses. A few of their most notable pointers include:

• Develop an emergency plan.
• Backup your computer data systems regularly.
• Decide how you will communicate with employees, customers and others.
• Practice and maintain your plan.

The IRS emphasizes that the pre-planning phase of business continuity is the most critical, stating "How quickly your company can get back to business after a disaster often depends on emergency planning done today." The agency also encourages businesses to conduct annual reviews of their emergency preparedness plans, noting that onboarding new employees should require an overview of this plan. Such a thorough preparedness plan, requiring annual revisits and employee on-boarding, is no small endeavor for businesses of any size. As the past few years can attest, however, the consequences of failing to make continuity a priority can be fatal to businesses.

According to statistics released by The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), more than 40% of businesses never reopen after a disaster. Among those that do, only 29% are still operating two years later. For those businesses that lost access to their  technological infrastructure for nine days or more after a disaster, the risk of filing for bankruptcy within one year increases exponentially. Thus, the decision to hire an IT service provider that provides first-rate business continuity solutions should be made for the following reasons:

• To position an organization to be even stronger, even after disaster strikes Calculating your Recovery Time can position your business to expect the unexpected.
• To provide extra assurance for every level of the organization - As a recent IT Web article states, "One of the unseen but important aspects of business continuity and disaster recovery planning is that it provides peace of mind to the organization."
• To ensure access to an evolving set of backup methods - Traditional backup methods are no longer sufficient. With the growing adoption of cloud computing and a more mobile workforce, new threats are constantly emerging. A first-rate IT solution will stay on top of your evolving business needs.

Although we are only into the second month of 2018, natural disasters have not relented and a volatile future is almost certain. Businesses that invest in their preparedness cannot prevent the storm winds that blow, but will be poised to recover when they do.

Jack Harasimowicz is an account specialist with iuvo Technologies.