Mexico. Currently, companies of all sizes have to manage all the information that is generated day by day, such as the data of customers, suppliers, collaborators, etc. However, even if you have advanced software to index and manage all the data, there is a possibility that one or more documents will be lost and untraceable after any technological disaster. If this happens, customer trust can be weakened; productivity and incomes can be seriously threatened.
There are situations where companies can have failures and crashes in their business-critical systems and these failures can have devastating direct and indirect costs to the business. Faced with this, Ricoh Mexicana, a global technology company, offers three recommendations to have a solid plan to have the information available in the event of any technological disaster:
Digitize the information: There is a tendency to think that digital information is the main source with which companies work. The data that is generated in social networks and digital transactions – including Big Data – along with digitally native information are mainly responsible for digital information growing and multiplying exponentially. However, even today, 95% of the information a company handles is in documents stored on paper.
Therefore, the best strategy that can be implemented is to transform these paper documents into digital documents. For a correct transformation, it must be taken into account that digital documents are part of business processes, where many times the paper document is the center of the process.
The ideal is to create the digital document from the source – what would be a native digital document, or as close as possible to its creation, to be able to incorporate it into the digital circuit as early as possible and, in turn, the paper document has the shortest possible life.
Have 100% protected information: Faced with any eventuality that arises, companies must have the ability to offer an agile and fast response to locate the necessary information as soon as possible. Protecting 100% the information of the company and all departments will keep the business running and not generate monetary losses.
Have strategies to allocate resources during information retrieval: It's crucial that IT departments prioritize customer-facing systems and other business-critical aspects, while certain data (such as email files) may wait a little longer. When prioritizing during information retrieval, business continuity must be paramount. Sometimes, while certain IT systems are down, the company can still operate through manual or alternative processes for reasonable periods of time. When that is the case, other systems – those that cannot operate in any alternative way – should take precedence.
The Disaster Recovery Plan must be decisive: What IT needs to know about tech disasters, is that it doesn't really matter what kind of incident is affecting your business, what makes it a real mess is the impact it has. And to determine how to respond, IT managers need to ask themselves the question: "How long does it take to restore the system?" That is why it is necessary to have continuous supervision. You have to analyze which documents and programs will be most affected and how long they will take to be restored. A full assessment of what program performance looks like under normal circumstances is necessary, and only then can damage in an emergency be judged and estimated what is needed to recover.
IT departments are undoubtedly an important part of the recovery and restoration of programs and information that could be affected after a technological disaster. Having a contingency plan will help the entire company to act quickly so as not to have losses in the business. But, if the IT department doesn't have the time to properly implement an action plan, it's worth considering outsourcing system repair management. On the other hand, companies should also advise their employees so that when such a case happens, they focus on strategic activities so as not to lose anything valuable within the company.
