Every business owner has a similar nightmare — your company being destroyed by a natural disaster. Fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods are terrifying to infrastructure and the well-being of your team. SaaS businesses can lose money and valuable resources that they cannot recover quickly enough to keep going.
- A global pandemic
- Natural disaster
- Human-made disaster
- Power outage
- International threats
- Cyberattacks
- Password and information breaches
To prevent a company from losing its SaaS, it is important to have a business continuity SaaS plan. The first step in this process would be looking at the threats and preparing for them as best you can.
What’s a business continuity SaaS Plan?
Business continuity is an organization’s ability to continue core functions and operations when unplanned incidents or natural disasters bring its critical systems to a halt. This requires collaboration between departments to devise plans that can restore standard operation within certain time periods based on technology implementations.
A business continuity SaaS plan is a company’s answer to questions like “What if?” and “How will we respond?”. This type of plan includes an analysis of the risks that could affect your organization, what you would do in response, and how long it might take. It also contains information about contacts or technical designs to be accessed outside of emergencies.
Making a business continuity SaaS plan
When planning for business continuity, SaaS companies need to do the following:
A SaaS business first needs to identify the purpose of a continuity plan and then set clear goals around it. Examples include: – – Make sure that employees have all their important files backed up in case they lose access or if there is an attack on our systems – Ensuring data has been backed up, tested, and verified as being recoverable from offsite storage facilities for example:
- How detailed should the plan be?
- How many departments will this plan cover?
- What elements will make a successful plan?
- Which milestones should we track?
Business continuity planning is a very important step to take, but there are many different factors that you need to keep in mind. One of the most important considerations for your business continuity plan is the budget allocated towards it. Training and recovery require money too.
Choose your A-Team Properly
To have a successful business continuity plan, you must ensure your team has enough support. Your backup should be able to do everything from answering the phone and sending emails all the way up through acting as first responders or sub-teams in case of disaster.
You can create task-oriented teams based on the size and workload of your company. Click To Tweet
Make a Business Impact Analysis
The Business Impact Analysis (BIA) is an integral part of any business continuity plan. This step collects information on potential threats to your company and the state of current security, as well as possible vulnerabilities that may not be known yet.
The BIA document also lists down explanations for what are considered core SaaS deliverables and the most critical areas which need protection in case something goes wrong.
Finally, it will list scenarios with descriptions about how they can happen along with all available resources at hand that would deal effectively if these situations were to occur.
Highlight the Key Business Objectives for your business continuity SaaS plan
The first rule for disaster recovery is to identify the key business objectives. Think about what will be impacted most by a disaster, such as revenue loss or reputation.
You should classify objectives as high, medium, or low depending on the severity of their consequences. For instance, a SaaS business that provides services in times of crisis needs to have its operations removed offsite so that it can provide customers with better service.
List Down the Pain Points or Obstacles
When it comes to brainstorming a business continuity plan, you need to get all key stakeholders involved. Another way is by developing a rating system for crucial functions and asking your team what they think about each one.
Craft your Operations Plan
It is crucial to revisit the SaaS business continuity plan with every change you make. A good example of this would be COVID-19, which had a huge impact on all companies in the tech industry.
Prevention strategy
I’ve compiled a list of preventive actions for SaaS businesses that need to be taken before an accident occurs. This includes things like remote working, which I think is important because it can help prevent accidents such as COVID-19.
Response strategy
Every department needs to have an emergency response plan. These rules are the foundation of quick and easy recovery back to normalcy after a disaster like COVID-19. After this event, each department should know how to report back with safety protocols and updates for their higher-ups.
Recovery strategy
After a SaaS business goes through an incident, it needs to focus on recovery. For example, when the lockdown is over and employees are called back into work, they need detailed plans of what should be done.
When dealing with media and people, it is important to have a spokesperson ready. In this case, the Recovery Point Objective (RPO) defines timelines.
Make a Testing Schedule
One way to prepare for emergencies is by developing a basic training and business continuity plan that employees can use in an emergency. Tactical exercises, such as mock drills or simulations, will be more effective than simply teaching people about what you’re doing. Doing so ensures that they are prepared at all times.
Your best employees are the ones who can handle any situation, but you should train others to take charge if they need more responsibility. Click To Tweet
At the end of every exercise or drill, everyone must be ready and motivated to follow each step in your contingency plan metrics.
Conclusion
With this article, you now know what to do for your business continuity SaaS plan. These measures will not only help reduce vulnerabilities but also make your company more resilient during emergencies, even if some of these steps are never executed.
