Ensuring Business Continuity to Reduce Downtime

Ensuring Business Continuity to Reduce Downtime

How much of your day is spent worrying about business continuity during an IT outage? When your technology fails, productivity drops, sales stall, customer service suffers, and product deliveries are delayed.

Downtime, or even minor disruptions, aren’t just frustrating—they’re costly. According to Datto, small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) can lose up to $8,000 monthly due to downtime. It’s no wonder such losses can cause sleepless nights.

As a business owner, you’re constantly juggling responsibilities. With so much on your plate, it’s easy for IT management to slip through the cracks. While today’s technology is reliable, it’s not foolproof.

Your Ideal IT Scenario

Imagine offloading all your IT tasks and concerns to an expert you trust to keep your technology updated, secure, available, and running smoothly. They’d even ensure you’re prepared for disasters.

Many SMBs turn to Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to handle daily IT tasks, including backups, hardware and software issue resolution, secure access, remote monitoring, network management, and more. When the unexpected occurs, preventative measures are in place to switch over to a failover server, minimizing or eliminating downtime.

True Peace of Mind

Picture a scenario where your technology causes no headaches, updates don’t disrupt data continuity, and downtime is a foreign concept. This may sound like a dream, but a reliable MSP can make it a reality by delivering a comprehensive business continuity plan.

Partnering with a dependable IT provider allows you to relax, knowing your technology is covered no matter what happens.

Nitor has the expertise and experience to manage your technology end-to-end. From quick problem resolution and critical updates to data backups, security, seamless new technology deployment, and disaster preparedness, we’ve got you covered. Instead of worrying about your technology, you can focus on your future with confidence.

Restless nights, constant headaches, daily disruptions—however IT issues manifest for you, they’re always on your mind. And rightfully so, as IT failures can be disastrous for your business.

Fortunately, you have options to permanently remove IT from your list of worries.

It’s Not a Matter of If, But When

All technology eventually faces issues. Staying ahead of problems can feel impossible, and minor IT issues can snowball into significant downtime. Some days, handing over all your IT responsibilities to someone else sounds ideal.

By entrusting your technology to an MSP, you gain peace of mind knowing a team of experts handles everything IT-related. No surprises, no worries. Whether it’s getting a printer back online, updating antivirus software, implementing a disaster recovery plan, upgrading the network, or backing up critical data, you can confidently focus on your business.

Discover how Nitor can ensure business continuity for your company. Contact us today to get a FREE IT assessment and receive up to three months free of IT support.  

Ready to learn more? Check out our past blogs!


Disaster Recovery vs. Business Continuity: What’s the Difference?

Disaster Recovery vs. Business Continuity: What’s the Difference?

When it comes to the livelihood of your business, you probably have some measures in place to make sure your business can withstand a disaster. That’s where business continuity and disaster recovery plans come into play. These plans are critical to the survival of your business, which is why they’re so important to have.

However, there are still businesses who don’t have any precautions in place. According to a survey by Mercer, 51% of businesses don’t have any kind of business continuity plan in place. The same can be said for disaster recovery. As a business owner, you need both a business continuity and disaster recovery plan, but what’s the difference between the two? In this blog, we will explain each type of plan and how they differ.

#1 – When the Plan Takes Place

The first key difference between business continuity and disaster recovery is when each of them can be enacted. When it comes to business continuity, the plan is focused on both preventive and recovery steps and can take place before or during a disaster. Disaster recovery is more specific. This plan takes place after a disaster occurs. Business continuity is the bigger picture of making sure your business continues to run, and disaster recovery is one of the pieces of that big picture.

#2 – What Each Plan Involves

Different from business continuity plans, disaster recovery plans involve a variety of strategies from safety procedures to data backup procedures. For disaster recovery, there are a few elements that go into the plan. Some of the elements include:

  • Creating a disaster recovery team
  • Assessing all the risks
  • Determining your critical business procedures
  • Creating your backup and offsite procedures
  • A business continuity plan is a bit broader, since it covers everything about your business. Some common elements of a business continuity plan include:
  • An analysis of all your critical business functions
  • Identifying potential threats
  • Developing strategies to avoid risks
  • Contact information for key and emergency personnel

#3 – They Have Different Goals

The goals between the two plans are a bit different. For business continuity, the primary goal is to make sure that your business can run during a disaster. Some other objectives are to reduce the financial loss and make sure critical services are uninterrupted. As for disaster recovery, the primary goal of the plan is to minimize the amount of downtime and data loss you experience. Establishing alternate ways to operate your business and complying with regulations are other objectives of a disaster recovery plan.

How Do Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Work Together?

They both help businesses prepare for the worst. Together, their purpose is to make sure your business can bounce back from disruptions and continue to be successful. When you don’t have a business continuity and disaster recovery plan, you leave your business vulnerable to disasters – and several other issues that eat into your organization’s productivity. Consider this: the Federal Emergency Management Agency found that 40% of businesses never reopen after a disaster. So it’s important that you account for how you will recover when an issue does arise.

We know everything from disaster recovery to business continuity can be overwhelming. Instead of stressing over these plans, leave it to the IT experts. Here at Nitor Solutions, our experts are ready to tackle your IT concerns so you can focus on what matters – your business.

Check out our past blogs and contact a member of our team to learn more about disaster recovery and other great cyber tips.