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You can’t predict when your offices will experience an event such as a power failure or a bigger disaster, such as flooding, however you can protect it to minimize the damages that can occur as a result of such a situation.
Many companies rely on their Accounting ERP software on a daily basis for managing their business, and any time without access to it can result in loss of sales, loss of income and loss of ongoing business. Having a disaster recovery plan (which does not have to be complex or costly) can mitigate the damages caused by downtime. Yet many small to mid size businesses do not have such a plan in place.
While a full blown plan should start with a risk assessment, followed by complete documentation of procedures and steps to follow, the key components of a basic plan include immediate backup power, data backups and facilities from which to access the data.
Immediate Backup Power
It is critical that servers hosting key data, a workstation and a printer all have an un-interruptable power supply (UPS). In the case of a power failure, depending on the power of the UPS this should give a minimum of 20 – 30 minutes of time to save documents, complete transactions which are in the middle of being processed, download any spreadsheets or other documents onto portable storage and print any key documents which will be needed. If using a laptop, as long as the batteries are charged this acts as a built in UPS.