Inclement weather, especially tornadoes and hurricanes, wreak havoc on businesses and infrastructure. Although you never know when incidents will occur, be confident that you will get through it by planning for anything. Be prepared. An excellent place to start is with a FEMA Ready Toolkit specific to different scenarios, including hurricanes and tornadoes. They have listed four easy steps to get you started:
- Identify Your Risk
- Develop A Plan
- Take Action
- Be Recognized and Inspire Others
What is a Business Continuity Plan?
A business continuity plan is for any aspect of your business when the unexpected occurs: power outages, natural disasters, cyber-attacks, and how you plan to keep the business open when these things inevitably happen.
What about your communication plan around natural disasters? How will you and your employees continue to service customers in their time of need? According to Forbes, 40 percent of SMBs fail to reopen after closing due to a natural disaster, and of the ones that reopen, 25 percent of those fail within that first year.
What Role Does a Cloud Phone System Play in a Business Continuity Plan?
A cloud phone system is flexible and redundant to withstand the unknowns that could occur. Traditionally, remote capabilities are marketed as having remote employees, but the same functionality is essential for disaster recovery.
A cloud phone system has failover capabilities and automatic routing that will kick in if any disruption is detected. A report from G2 states that using the cloud reduces downtime by 57 percent. Plan for any scenario, especially with tornado and hurricane season upon us.
How Does a Cloud Phone System Work in a Disaster Scenario?
Voice connectivity in a disaster event is the reassurance a customer expects to get them through. For example, if a short power outage occurs, having the cloud phone system app loaded on your employees’ cellphones means they can continue working and answering questions until power is restored. If it is something more severe, like an impending hurricane or needing shelter in a tornado, have your staff equipped to work remotely and safely. Build into your business continuity plan steps to familiarize all employees with logging in from outside the office.
Call Routing/Forwarding
Analyzing your business needs will determine how intricate your cloud phone system, call routing, and forwarding rules need to be. For after-hours IT emergencies, you could have a call-routing rule that when it’s after a particular time, this specific number or group gets a call that help is needed. Forwarding can be activated so that when a number or extension is dialed, the call is forwarded based on the rules built into the system.
Geo-Redundancy
An incredibly useful aspect of cloud phone systems is that connectivity is not dependent on location. Since you connect to the phone system through an app or browser, your connection is routed through various data centers far from where the inclement weather is happening. You aren’t locked to a local on-premise PBX and subjected to the same issues you are experiencing.
Scalable For Any Situation
Scalability saves any scenario from downtime. During crisis scenarios, you could see a dramatic increase in calls, so being able to scale up or down to meet those increases without causing negative effects on those calling in is a feature that saves you so much frustration. You can immediately match what is needed instead of being caught off guard and scrambling.
Remote and Mobile
Remote and mobile connections are a game-changer in the business world. The ability to be this flexible without needing a “satellite phone and remote link” being carried around in a briefcase like in the movies seems like something we could’ve only dreamed about. For example, there is a hurricane building strength off the coast, you pull out your trusty business continuity plan, and test to ensure employees know how to log in remotely, you check settings in the phone system, and you proactively tell everyone to work from home for the next 72 hours until it passes.
In this utterly made-up scenario, the office is in the hurricane’s potential path, and everyone lives in a safe zone.
Reduce Downtime and Stay Available with a Cloud Phone System from Axxess Networks
Your ability to be up and helping your clients is a significant source of comfort that needs you. Developing a business continuity plan, incorporating a cloud phone system, and running disaster drills will make your business more resilient and robust than ever. Contact Axxess Networks today to be available when you are needed the most.
