How Cloud Technology Fits Into Your Business Continuity Plan

Few things are more important than having a business continuity plan in place to guide your business through unexpected events. How would you respond to a cyberattack? What would you do in the case of a flood, a fire, or, as we’ve experienced in the past year, a global health crisis? The goal of a business continuity plan is to have a ready answer for how you will continue to operate and serve customers when unforeseen challenges come your way.

One of the crucial pieces of the business continuity puzzle is your technology stack. Business simply can’t go on without  tools, tech, and apps running smoothly and without interruption. This is true for employees working on internal processes and for your ability to provide services to customers. If you take a look at your essential processes, functions, and services, which ones are vulnerable to an IT disruption?

Building Cloud Technology Into Your Business Continuity Plan

If your mission-critical programs, software, and tools are on a local server or only accessible on a local computer, you’re out of luck if going into the office is no longer an option, your local server fails, or a cyberattack takes down your operations. It’s for this reason (among many others!) that cloud technology has taken off. Business resiliency is a built-in benefit, and it’s the ideal answer to our remote work, fast-paced, always-changing world.

Managing a remote workforce

Business has been evolving toward the cloud for some time. Even before the pandemic, it was possible to have a fully collaborative, rock star team working remotely 100% of the time. In fact, Swizznet is a fully remote company, and having cloud-based tools already in place allowed us to support our employees and navigate the unknowns of Covid-19. We ramped up our use of communication tools like Zoom and Slack, and we were able to provide key services to our customers even without access to a central, physical location. Part of your business continuity plan going forward should include steps on how you will deploy tech that will empower a distributed workforce, whether by choice or by an unforeseen circumstance.

Improving cybersecurity

Throughout the pandemic, there has been a huge surge in cyberattacks targeting everyone from the government and healthcare companies to small businesses. Phishing attacks are the main culprit and often result in serious financial losses. Oftentimes, smaller businesses managing their own security and IT don’t have access to the people and financial resources needed to defend against attacks. When working with providers of cloud tools, however, enterprise-grade technology typically inaccessible to small businesses is built in. No organization wants to fall victim to an attack for the reputational and financial costs as well as the disruption to business.

Improving connectivity and employee experience

Part of maintaining business continuity is making sure that employees can collaborate and  sustain their productivity without physically interacting with one another. When everything employees need in the cloud, they have anytime, anywhere access to data, files, and essential information. Remote access to software and data should be a key part of your business continuity plan so everyone can keep working without missing a beat. Though remote access is possible through VPN, security issues abound and connectivity is often poor. Cloud services are quick and easy to access anywhere you have internet service.  Employee productivity and satisfaction improves with fewer bottlenecks slowing them down.

Whether it’s throughout the remainder of this public health crisis or on into the future, making cloud hosting part of your business continuity plan is a smart way to ensure access to your business and accounting software. Want to try out hosted accounting for your business? You can start a 15-day trial here.

Bob Hollander is a business guru who’s been developing rapid growth in technology services companies for 20+ years. Outside of that, he’s an aficionado of leadership strategy, teamwork, collaboration, and all the critical skills that make businesses run. As Swizznet’s President and CEO, Bob is a champion for businesses of all sizes, and you can bet he’ll be burning the midnight oil to help business owners accelerate growth through technology. Find Bob on LinkedIn.