The importance
of backing up your documents.
 Fire,
flood and other disasters remain threats to businesses.
You can insure your premises, your contents, your office
equipment, and even your people: but how do you insure
that most irreplaceable asset – your business
data and records?
"There's no insurance policy that could ever
bring back the names and numbers you need"
- Thomas Finks, CEO Sundance Computers, after a major
theft.
Some key facts:
More than 32,000 UK business premises suffered fires
in 2002, according to the Office of the Deputy Prime
Minister.
The DTI’s statistics say that amongst businesses
that suffer major loss of records, more than 2/3rds
will close.
The LCCI rates this grim risk even higher: it says
that “…80% of businesses without a well
structured recovery plan are forced to shut within
12 months of a flood or fire”: and “…90%
of businesses that lose their data in a disaster are
forced to shut within 2 years…” (London
Chamber of Commerce and Industry: “Disaster
Recovery: Business Tips for Survival” 2003.)
The US educational organisation, Vital Records Protection
has established its website (www.vitalrecordsprotection.org)
to provide educational information about the protection
of vital records from fire, disaster and other dangers.
The following extract is taken by kind permission from
their website:
“To state it as simply as possible, the
first step in disaster planning is records protection.
The safeguarding of vital and irreplaceable company
records and documentation is absolutely crucial to
corporate survival. If vital records that fall into
certain categories, such as financial documentation
records or sales orders - are lost, and can not be
replaced quickly enough, a company could lose serious
business as competitors move in to grab market share.
In fact, all businesses that have something to
lose need a vital records protection strategy plan,
and one that especially incorporates measures to protect
against fire. To lend some perspective to the question
of how much are your vital records worth, according
to statistics from the National Fire Protection Association,
47 percent of all businesses that suffer a catastrophic
fire cease operations inside of one year. Ninety percent
of those firms whose records are destroyed are no
longer in business a year later.”
To constitute a disaster, fire or flood doesn’t
necessarily have to destroy your entire premises. A
small fire in your principal office or computer room
can be devastating if your records aren’t adequately
backed up. Many medium sized businesses are well insured,
but badly prepared for such occurrences.
Consider this question: if you entered your office tomorrow
to find it flooded or gutted by fire, how well, and
how quickly, could you recover the information contained
in the paper records around you?
An Electronic Document Management system can play a
vital role in protecting your priceless business records.
Disaster recovery becomes a routine restore from backup
rather than a painstaking forensic reconstruction exercise.
Crucially, the ability to claim effectively against
your business insurance policy is influenced by the
availability of key company records: the fixed asset
register, the invoices as evidence of major purchases,
the sales records to evidence lost turnover, the vehicle
registration records, etc, etc. If the filing cabinets
that contain these records have burned, an insurance
claim becomes a major problem.
All such records can easily be captured and archived
in a good document management system: so that if disaster
strikes, a business manager has vital time to concentrate
on restoring the business, rather than reconstructing
it’s records.
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