When disaster strikes, your primary objective as a business manager is to ensure the safety of your employees. Any incident that puts their health at risk, whether it's a major storm or otherwise, means that they are a priority. But once you secure your workers and everything settles down, your company has another objective – get back up and running.
While the snowy season and the harsh winter conditions are just about over, the spring and summer bring their own set of weather-related risks. Tornados, earthquakes and hurricanes are all common during the warmer months, depending on the location of your organization. Business managers must prepare ahead of time to ensure their companies are able to overcome these incidents.
The physical structure of the office building doesn't have to be compromised for the business to suffer from the disaster. A power outage during a data transfer can jeopardize information integrity and open up security risks. Walls, desks and even computers can be replaced. Information and lost man hours often cannot. Businesses that lose important data, particularly SMBs with a limited amount of the resources required to get it back, can suffer greatly. Some small businesses that experience this have to close and never reopen.
Implementing cloud based services into your organization can help limit the impact of a natural disaster. Storing information offsite in a secure environment will allow you to persevere, even if you have to relocate for a period of time. You may take time to get back up and running in an office, but with cloud based services and a small business VoIP solution, a disaster should have a limited impact on operations.