who can,” Boyd said. “The customer will
just go someplace else.”
Develop communication strategies
that can guide employees and alert
clients to what’s going on. “You
need to be able to tell people almost
immediately when you’ll be up and
at what location,” Boyd said. “If a
collection agency isn’t able to take calls
or make calls because its systems are
down, they will lose all credibility with
their clients, who are trusting you to
take care of their accounts.”
Practice makes Perfect
The size of your recovery plan should
be dictated by what you’re trying to
achieve. Your plan can be a two-page
checklist or a 600-page document—it
depends on what you need and why
you’re doing it.
“A lot of it is common sense,” Boyd
said. “You just need to think through
potential problems and come up with
rational solutions.”
ACA International provides a
Disaster Plan Template to help its
members write their own disaster plan.
Available on ACA Online (http://www.
acainternational.org/disasterplanning), the
Word document can be downloaded to
your computer and used as a template
to create a recovery plan for your
organization. It provides a basic outline
covering the various sections of a
disaster plan and may be modified to fit
your needs.
No matter how simple or complex
your plan, you must put it into practice
on a regular basis. If it just sits on a
shelf, it will quickly become outdated,
and you’ll learn the hard way that your
assumptions were incorrect.
couldn’t do it, or the business didn’t
even think about creating a recovery
plan because they didn’t know a solution
was out there.”
After you grapple with the safety
measures that immediately arise during
a disaster, your next concern should be
the long-term health of your company.
How will you maintain business as usual
in an environment that is anything but
“usual?”
Working with a third-party disaster
recovery consultant may improve
your chances of survival. A good crisis
management provider can help you
quickly get your hands on the things you
need to keep your business functioning.
“We had a client call us when its
exchange server failed,” Boyd said.
“The company had called Dell to
replace it, but they couldn’t send it for
17 days. That would’ve put them out
of business for more than two weeks!
So we sent them one the next day and
they were immediately up and running
again.”
For a fee, disaster management
companies take the guesswork out
of dealing with a crisis. When an
emergency arises, companies simply call
their provider to explain the situation
and their needs. Disaster management
companies react by restoring power
to your office, helping you move to a
new facility, replacing office supplies,
obtaining new technology and more.
Anne Rosso is associate editor of
Collector.
suGGesteD ResouRCes
Continuity Services
“I think historically, for most
small businesses, one of two things
have happened in regards to disaster
planning,” Boyd said. “Either they’ve
thought about having a disaster recovery
plan in the past and it turned out to be
so expensive and daunting that they
