A disaster recovery/business continuity plan has traditionally been like an insurance policy for your business. As with most insurance, its return on investment was usually not fully realized until disaster struck and the benefits kicked in.
But as our economy becomes increasingly dependent on e-commerce, having a solid Disaster Recovery (DR) plan can deliver more than just insurance. It can give your company a competitive advantage, and help it to win new business, too.
More and More Businesses Rely On IT
An increasing number of progressive organizations are building DR plans, because they understand how important their information content is. Businesses whose only activities were building and selling products now rely on information systems to increase their sales and revenues.
Nowadays most businesses need a strong web presence to remain competitive. They need to define and describe their products, and they need to offer order-taking and delivery services. They realize that any downtime in their IT capabilities will hurt their bottom line. Therefore, by default, IT DR becomes a much more important job to complete.
DR Goes Hand In Hand With Other Cost-Efficiency Measures
DR is rarely used as a means to save money in and of itself. However, your organization may be able to avoid future costs such as license fees and the maintenance of obsolete equipment if you combine a DR plan with any plan to update your IT environment.
Making things DR friendly in your IT environment helps forward the mission to consolidate, simplify or virtualize it. Taking measures to boost efficiency, cost control or productivity represents the perfect opportunity to make sure your DR plans are as current as possible.
In this way, DR is not the driver to save money, but it does help the business case for other projects that do end up saving your company money.
DR Plans Add Value To A Company
Organizations are always seeking ways to enhance their reputation and brand. Having an updated DR plan may be one way a company can differentiate itself when, say, it is bidding against competitors trying to win new business. The company with evidence of the best DR capabilities no doubt has an edge over the company whose DR plan is outdated or incomplete.
The ability to guarantee service continuity and recovery is also becoming a factor in competitive situations. More companies are starting to view the promise of continuous service and availability as an important aspect of a business relationship.
Updated DR capabilities increase the value of service for any business, representing a considerable return on any investment to this end.
