ERP Readiness: Training for Disaster Recovery

In this post, we bring our ERP Readiness Series to a close by addressing disaster recovery and business continuity planning. We started by looking at the many roles needed to select and implement Enterprise Solutions like ERP. We continued the series with a hard look at process assessment and documentation, and we wrapped by addressing some often-overlooked areas of technology readiness. If you have any questions about assessing your organization’s readiness, reach out to us in the comments, below, or on our contact page.

We often think about headline-grabbing natural disasters when we think about disaster recovery and business continuity: earthquakes, forest fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, and flooding. We also think about various man-made disasters like terrorism, arson, hacking, and computer viruses. And, while those are certainly valid concerns when creating a disaster recovery plan, there are other, less obvious sources of risk that need to be planned for—many of which are internal and can be addressed in ways to actually prevent disaster.

Facilities failure

Consider what happens to your server room if the power goes down. Are there battery backups or generators? What if the air-conditioning and ventilation system goes down, are there backup systems in place? What if the sprinkler system fails and leaks in a server room? Though it is impossible to eliminate all risks to your IT infrastructure, it is possible to mitigate facilities-related risks by establishing and following a thorough facilities maintenance plan. Having—and routinely testing and maintaining—backup systems like generators and ventilation systems is less costly than having those systems fail when they are needed.

Similarly, do your employees know how to report to work when they are unable to access their place of work due to a disaster? Where should employees go? What critical tasks can be accomplished remotely and who is responsible for doing them? How will managers communicate with employees if a facility becomes inaccessible due to fire or flood? Do you and your employees know what to do? As we’ll see, training is a vitally important part of disaster recovery.

Insufficient training and knowledge sharing

In your organization, who knows how to manage backup and recovery systems when needed? In many small and medium businesses, this is the job of the IT department—which may be one IT person! What happens if that person is on vacation or sick? In cases of natural disaster, that person may be unable to reach your building or to access your system remotely. What if that person becomes a disgruntled employee and sabotages your network? Can anyone else in the organization deny that person access to your system? Is anyone else trained in recovering system backups?

Mitigating the risk of having too much system-wide, institutional knowledge invested in one employee involves creating and implementing a robust training program so that other employees or managers can step in to a technical role as needed in a disaster.

Furthermore, disaster recovery training is an organization-wide process. Employees need to be trained on which systems might not be available in a disaster recovery situation. What are employees to do until systems are brought back online? Does your customer service agent or warehouse employee know what to do if they suspect that their workstation is infected with a virus? How do they report a potential computer infection to IT personnel, and what actions are they to follow to prevent the spread of a virus? Regular employee training is crucial to ensuring business continuity, and disaster recovery training should be a fundamental part of the employee on-boarding process and their ongoing training program.

License and domain expiration

As more and more software services are moving to the cloud, tracking software licenses has become easier. However, it is still common for businesses to allow user-installed software and to continue the use of legacy systems. Creating and maintaining a database of software licenses, business-owned website domains, and their expiration dates, is crucial. Regularly auditing software usage is also crucial in order to determine if the versions your employees are using are secure and supported. Unsupported software can increase your organization’s exposure to unauthorized intrusions and computer viruses.  Regular software license auditing also potentially cuts down on spending for unneeded, unused software licenses.

Manual workarounds and offline systems

Modern businesses rely on their ERP systems, and for good reason. ERP systems are efficient and increase the speed and accuracy with which work can be accomplished. However, just like having a paper map in your glove compartment allows you to navigate if your GPS system goes down, having manual systems available to your employees allows them to continue to work if your ERP system goes down. Being able to retrieve and use paper order forms that can be filled out with customers on the phone until an ordering system can be recovered enables business continuity. Manual systems can be back-logged into the system once it is back online. Manual systems, just like all other components of a disaster recovery plan, involve employee training and periodic testing.

Practice makes perfect

“You play like you practice and practice how you play.” Marcus Luttrell, Retired Navy SEAL and co-author of Lone Survivor.

OSHA recommends holding fire drills as often as necessary to keep employees prepared. Similarly, disaster recovery plans need to involve periodic training and simulated practice in order to keep employees prepared in the event of a disaster. Practice a simulation of a simple data loss and have trained employees recover the simulated data. Perhaps, over a weekend, you run certain teams through a simulated disaster, like a flood or tornado. Simulate the situation as much as possible and have employees execute the disaster recovery plan. This will not only keep employees prepared in the face of catastrophe, it will reveal weaknesses in your disaster recovery plan.

Another set of eyes

Third party disaster recovery audits can help ensure that all of these different components are in place and working. Need help with your disaster recovery plan? Would you like another set of eyes on the plans you made? We can help. Give us a call today.

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Photo by Max LaRochelle on Unsplash