6 Steps to Building Business Continuity for Customers

Ensuring critical business functions are up and running is what business continuity is all about — plain and simple. Any customer of yours hit by a diaster should be able to continue on without having to close up shop. It’s why they’re putting money in your pocket.

CCNS Consulting owner Karl Bickmore spoke briefly with MSPmentor on this topic and outlined how his firm, a Scottsdale, Arizona-based managed services provider (MSP), keeps customer operations up and running during and after a disaster.

Here’s how Bickmore tackles his customer’s business continuity challenges.

Assess the client’s needs. During this stage, Bickmore’s company determines customer retention needs (also known as recovery time objective, their current data and their projected data growth.

Select the right backup solution. “Then we get them the right backup solution in place,” he says. “Almost always this is a Datto Siris product, due to the clients we focus on.” He says for many new customers “this is the first solid backup they have had in some time.”

Are backups working in a secure off-site data center? Then Bickmore says he gets backups working to a secure off-site datacenter. He says they leverage Datto because their data centers are compliant and based in the United States.

Monitoring and testing of backup. “Then we setup monitoring and testing of the backup with daily automated virtualization and quarterly engineer testing of the backup,” he says.

Designing the plan. Then comes the actual business continuit and disaster recovery plan, which includes standards for who responds, priorities for resumption, and plans for recovery. “This includes writing the policies and training their staff on them, as well,” he says.

Review. The final step is to explain how you’ll maintain the environment by giving quarterly data growth projection reviews and an annual policy review,” he says.

When it comes to protecting the assests of your customers: leave no stone unturned. If they lose days of business due to a disaster, it’s coming out of your pocket.

Follow CJ Arlotta on Twitter @cjarlotta and Google+ for further updates on the story above.