The vast majority of business owners are well aware of the fact that disaster can strike at any time. As a result most do take steps to prevent this from happening or at least limiting the potential impact. However, there is always a chance that these plans don’t work. To help prevent this from happening to your business, it might be a good idea to know about the common ways continuity plans do fail.
There are many ways a business continuity or backup and recovery plan may fail, but if you know about the most common reasons then you can better plan to overcome these obstacles, which in turn will give you a better chance of surviving a disaster.
1. Not Customizing A Plan
Some companies take a plan that was developed for another organization and copy it word-for-word. While the general plan will often follow the same structure throughout most organizations, each business is different so what may work for one, won’t necessarily work for another. When a disaster happens, you could find that elements of the plan are simply not working, resulting in recovery delays or worse. Therefore, you should take steps to ensure that the plan you adopt works for your organization.
It is also essential to customize a plan to respond to different departments or roles within an organization. While an overarching business continuity plan is great, you are going to need to tailor it for each department. For example, systems recovery order may be different for marketing when compared with finance. If you keep the plan the same for all roles, you could face ineffective recovery or confusion as to what is needed, ultimately leading to a loss of business.
2. Action Plans That Contain Too Much Information
One common failing of business continuity plans is that they contain too much information in key parts of the plan. This is largely because many companies make the mistake of keeping the whole plan in one long document or binder. While this makes finding the plan easier, it makes actually enacting it far more difficult. During a disaster, you don’t want your staff and key members flipping through pages and pages of useless information in order to figure out what they should be doing. This could actually end up exacerbating the problem.
Instead, try keeping action plans – what needs to be done during an emergency – separate from the overall plan. This could mean keeping individual plans in a separate document in the same folder, or a separate binder that is kept beside the total plan. Doing this will speed up action time, making it far easier for people to do their jobs when they need to.
3. Failing To Properly Define The Scope
The scope of the plan, or who it pertains to, is important to define. Does the plan you are developing cover the whole organization, or just specific departments? If you fail to properly define who the plan is for, and what it covers there could be confusion when it comes to actually enacting it.
While you or some managers may have the scope defined in your heads, there is always a chance that you may not be there when disaster strikes, and therefore applying the plan effectively will likely not happen. What you need to do is properly define the scope within the plan, and ensure that all parties are aware of it.
4. Having An Unclear Or Unfinished Plan
Continuity plans need to be clear, easy to follow, and most of all cover as much as possible. If your plan is not laid out in a logical and clear manner, or written in simple and easy to understand language, there is an increased chance that it will fail. You should therefore ensure that all those who have access to the plan can follow it after the first read through, and find the information they need quickly and easily.
Beyond this, you should also make sure that all instructions and strategies are complete. For example, if you have an evacuation plan, make sure it states who evacuates to where and what should be done once people reach those points. The goal here is to establish as strong a plan as possible, which will further enhance the chances that your business will recover successfully from a disaster.
5. Failing To Test, Update, And Test Again
Even the most comprehensive and articulate plan needs to be tested on a regular basis. Failure to do so could result in once adequate plans not offering the coverage needed today. To avoid this, you should aim to test your plan on a regular basis – at least twice a year.
From these tests you should take note of potential bottlenecks and failures and take steps in order to patch these up. Beyond this, if you implement new systems, or change existing ones, revisit your plan and update it to cover these amendments and retest the plan again.
If you are worried about your continuity planning, or would like help implementing a plan and supporting systems, contact us today.
Suggested Edits Introduced To Drive
Both desktop and laptop computers are essential to any business, but many of us know that these devices can use a lot of power, especially laptops which also need to charge batteries. While these machines are getting more and more energy efficient, many developers like Apple have introduced energy saving functions. If you use an Apple laptop or desktop, do you know how to configure how your machine uses power?
What Is Energy Saver For Mac?
Energy Saver is a feature included in all versions of OS X after version 10.6 (Snow Leopard) that allows users to configure how their computer users energy – both when running on battery and when plugged in. All Apple computers have this feature, including desktop computers, but it is most useful for those with laptops, where you can configure your laptop to extend battery life.
Accessing Energy Saver Preferences
There are two ways you can access the Energy Saver function on your Mac. If you are using a laptop, you should see a battery icon in the top menu bar of the screen, usually located on the right. Press this and select Open Energy Saver Preferences…
If you don’t see the battery icon at the top of your screen, or are using a desktop, then press Command + Spacebar to open Spotlight. Type Energy Saver in the bar that opens at the top of the screen and click onEnergy Saver from the drop-down search results.
Looking At The Energy Saver Preferences
Depending on the type of Mac you are using – laptop or desktop – you should see up to three tabs – modes of power – at the top of the screen:
- Battery
- Power Adapter
- UPS (Uninterruptable Power Supply)
Clicking on any of the tabs will bring up power settings related to that particular power source.
Configuring Energy Use While On Battery
When you click the Battery tab you should see the following options come up (on OS X Mavericks and later.)
- Turn display off after: This is a slider bar that allows you to set how long the computer needs to be inactive (no buttons clicked, or user interaction) before the display is turned off. When you are operating off the battery, it is a good idea to set this lower so that the display – which draws power – will be turned off quicker, saving more power.
- Put hard disks to sleep when possible: When ticked, the hard disks will be put to sleep when the system isn’t being used, or they are not needed.
- Slightly dim the display while on battery power: Will lower the brightness of the screen when the power cord is unplugged in order to save more energy.
- Enable Power Nap while on battery power: Power Nap is a feature that allows the computer to wake up every now and then in order to check for software updates. It is a good idea to turn this function off if you are worried about saving battery life, instead checking for updates when the computer is awake.
Configuring Energy Use While On Power Adapter
When you click on the Power Adapter tab you should see the following options:
- Turn display off after: This is a slider which allows you to set when the display will turn off, after there has been no activity for a set period of time.
- Prevent computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off: By default, when the display is off on your computer, it will also go to sleep, which means all non-essential components are turned off. If you are say downloading a large file, or work with an IT team who needs access to your systems at night, then this is a good option to enable.
- Put hard disks to sleep when possible: When there is no activity, or the hard drives are not being used, your computer will shut them down, saving power.
- Wake for Wi-Fi network access: When you switch networks, your Wi-Fi turns on, or a program requires access to the Internet, the computer will wake up.
- Enable Power Nap while plugged into a power adapter: As above, stopping searches for software updates in the short-term to save battery life.
Configuring Energy Use While On UPS
When you click on the UPS tab you should see the following options:
- Computer sleep: Is a slider bar that allows you to set how long the computer should wait after inactivity to put itself to sleep.
- Display sleep: Is a slider bar that allows you to set how long the computer should wait when there is no activity to shut the display off while under UPS power.
- Put hard disks to sleep when possible: When ticked, the hard disks will be put to sleep when the system isn’t being used, or they are not needed.
- Slightly dim the display while on UPS: Will lower the brightness of the screen when the power cord is unplugged in order to save more energy.
- Start up automatically after a power failure: The UPS is designed to kick in when the power fails, and if your computer is connected to an UPS, and the power goes out – shutting it down – it will restart automatically when the power comes back on.
- Restart automatically if the computer freezes: If your computer freezes while connected to a UPS, it will restart automatically.
You can tick each of the options as you see fit and we recommend trying out different choices to see how your power usage fluctuates. If you have any concerns about how much power your systems are using, or their overall configuration, contact us today to learn how we can help.
Published on 15th July 2014 by Jeanne DeWitt.
