Over the last six to seven years the world has witnessed disaster on a scale of ever-increasing occurrence and ferocity. The Sumatran tsunami of 2004, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and the numerous floods across Europe are some events that have severely and adversely impacted both public and private sector operations. As a result, disaster recovery and business continuity have come on to agenda of many businesses of late.

 

Locally, however, we tend to take a more lax approach to disaster recovery. Tsunamis may not be our daily reality, however, many fail to recognise that natural disasters are not the main cause of business disasters. Hardware issues such as server failure, a power surge or failure, a flood or fire in the apartment above or below our business premises pose real threats to our operation.

 

Online document management offers a simple, effective and affordable way to safeguard a business.

 

Until recently, many companies perceived disaster recovery and business continuity plans and solutions as too expensive and complex. Document management was also pocket-holed into the same category.

 

Data is definitely mission-critical information and an online document management system could be the solution to a disaster recovery plan one never considered – it is cost-efficient and secure offering simple disaster protection.

The key to disaster preparedness and business continuity entails preservation of and access to mission-critical information in order to minimise business disruption. Online document management software can help your organisation achieve this objective.

 

An online solution provides cost efficiencies as it removes the need to install or maintain hardware and software. Most online document management systems are also relatively reasonably priced through subscription plans. There is no need for server ownership and maintenance costs.

 

Traditional disaster recovery solutions rely on manual processes documented in error-prone logbooks. Many companies are unable to perform routine failover testing, and may be able to meet their failover objectives. Offsite back-up facilities are not always available or prove to be too costly to set up.

 

With an online document management system, documents are already stored with automated back-ups removing the burden or reliance on IT resources or manual processes. An ODMS also typically offers secure offsite information storage and retrieval through servers located in protected data facilities easily accessible from anywhere in the world over the internet.

Process and security controls also guarantee information is safe and readily accessible at the simple click of a button. Traditional disaster recovery solutions may be complex to set up and therefore not feasible for smaller organisations. They typically require a secondary site, dedicated infrastructure, and hardware-based replication to move data to the secondary site.

 

An ODMS will store and protect mission-critical information. They are typically easy to use and implement, and provide additional benefits to the company such as improved flexibility and accessibility, better team cooperation, provide for round-the-clock operations providing uninterrupted data availability and improved control.