Business Continuity Planning & Strategy

Is the Need for a Business Continuity Plan on Your Radar? – We Can Help.

We are very fortunate. Southern Ontario isn’t usually the region that’s on the news because of hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, and massive flooding. As a result, Toronto area business owners aren’t as quick to put together business continuity plans.

But here’s the truth.

The disaster that’s likely to bring down your computer systems and cause your workflow to come to a screeching halt isn’t statistically going to be a big, regional weather-related disaster. Instead, your GTA company is much more likely to suffer a shutdown from one of these:

• A fire in your facility
• Human error
• Localized flooding
• Storm damage
• A power surge
• Ransomware
• Vandalism
• Cyber-criminal activity

What Does a Business Continuity Strategy Involve?

The goal of a business continuity strategy is to give you access to your IT assets, data, and internal processes in the event that something removes your local access at your facility. In order to accomplish this objective, several steps are taken.

• Step #1 – Assess your workflow to determine the essential workflows
• Step #2 – Determine what cloud scenario best supports those workflows
• Step #3 – Replicate those workflows in the cloud in a way that allows the replication to be synced perfectly with your onsite IT environment, or move workflows into the cloud entirely
• Step #4 – Set up processes for employees to be cared for and paid in the event of a more extensive disaster scenario. This includes plans for transportation, security, and alternate payment methods.
• Step #5 – Make arrangements for all workflow to be moved to a secondary location away from the area affected by the disaster
• Step #6 – Develop a Business Continuity Action Plan that includes the previous steps and is triggered if local access to your workflow is compromised
• Step #7 – Train employees to implement the Business Continuity Action Plan and assign each employee’s role in the implementation
• Step #8 – Test your business continuity at least once a year to ensure that everything is covered, that the employees know their role in the plan, and that your company growth hasn’t outpaced your business continuity strategy.

Business Continuity Strategy

How Much Does a Business Continuity Strategy Cost?

The Sysoft Business Continuity Service is a part of our Managed IT Services offering. Managed IT Services is an IT support model that provides complete, proactive IT support, maintenance, security, and operational monitoring for GTA companies in return for an easily-budgeted monthly fee. This subscription-based IT services package provides your employees with a stable, secure, and optimized IT platform from which to accomplish their daily tasks.

The benefit if tying our Business Continuity Strategy and Planning service into our Managed IT Services package is that we then have the ability to ensure that your IT systems have the highest level of availability and we can assist with the implementation of your business continuity plan if its implementation becomes necessary.

Because each company is different, Managed IT Services and the included Business Continuity Service is tailored and priced to each company’s unique requirements.