Enterprise Content Management
Yosemite Fire: A Technology Disaster Readiness Reminder
The Yosemite (or Rim) wildfire continues to grow. At 235,800 acres–roughly 368 square miles–it’s about to become the third-largest fire in California’s history. Due to careful planning and communication, homes have been evacuated, and thankfully to date, no one has been seriously hurt. However, to protect much-needed resources, rangers are wrapping their stations in fire-proof protective coatings. That’s not a robust disaster preparedness plan.
Although many of us are far away from the path of flames, this event should make us take stock of how prepared we are to face a technology disaster. Threats to your organization’s resources come in all shapes and sizes–from server failures to forest fires. Besides the obvious of having a plan in place for our most precious things–the people around us–all of us should take a realistic look at our disaster recovery and business continuity options.
Be Prepared for Technology Disasters
A well-thought-out document management strategy is a key part of planning for your organization’s operations to continue when faced with a devastating storm, natural disaster or emergency. The most important things to consider are:
- Is your organization ready?
- Will customer information be safe?
- Will documents and information be accessible?
When developing an effective disaster recovery plan, keep in mind paper is inefficient and inherently susceptible to damage. Relying on paper as a record for important documentation leaves your organization vulnerable. Especially during a disaster, when the risk of your paper documents becoming damaged, lost or inaccessible increases dramatically.
Decrease Your Dependency on Paper
That’s where enterprise content management (ECM) helps. ECM solutions strengthen your organization’s disaster recovery and business continuity processes by ensuring you store your important documents and data within a centralized, protected system. With an ECM solution, your organization is prepared for disaster by:
- Capturing paper as secure electronic documents and content
- Allowing you to access your electronic documents and content during disasters
- Securely storing and protecting your electronic documents and content
Because all this information is managed electronically, duplicate copies of everything are easily synchronized to off-site servers, ensuring that your data survives an event in any single location. Access solution will still be available via a secure website as soon as people can get back online. This frees your IT staff to focus on getting your on-premises system up and running.
Use the Cloud
To simplify (and protect) things even further, your ECM solution can be entirely hosted in the cloud. This way, your data is not tied to your physical location. In the event you have to abandon your premises, you retain continuous, uninterrupted access to everything you need. The Yosemite fire is a stark reminder for every organization to take disaster preparedness seriously. Being prepared for the worst will better enable you to provide consistent service in light of any disruption, like power outages, snow closures and network failures. When customers find your organization has weathered the storm and is up and running with instant access to data, you’ll be able to provide much-needed service–instead of trying to salvage paper.
Ready to browse enterprise content management platforms? Find the right ECM solution for your company by downloading our free Top 10 Enterprise Content Management Software comparison report, or browse top content management platforms on our Content Management Software resource center page.
- Vendor
Glenn Gibson
Enterprise Content Management Expert
