We all make personal New Year’s resolutions – exercise more, eat better, spend more time with friends and family. As you’ve rung in the New Year, have you evaluated what you did last year as it relates to your business and what you should change in 2018?
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As you are forging all of those New Year’s resolutions, now is a better time than ever to assess your disaster recovery plan. Many of us hold the belief that “it won’t happen to me,” that is, until it actually does. Not sure what I’m referring to as it relates to your salon? I’m talking about the unexpected disaster that could occur.
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Even if you think that the chance of a natural or manmade disaster at your place of business (the salon you’ve put your blood, sweat and tears into building) is unlikely, you should still have a plan in place to not only handle a disaster, but also to help prevent the effects of one. The actions that you take before, during and after an unforeseen event can make all the difference in terms of the impact it can have on your business.
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Unless you’re still using index cards to manage your customers and their packages and memberships, you’ve surely experienced an increased dependency on information technology to manage your salon operations. Since you can’t avoid some disasters from occurring, there are things that you can do to minimize the negative effects on your business and maintain some stability during a potentially tragic time.
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As your customer database is the lifeblood of your business, one of the most vital components of your disaster recovery plan should be a regular schedule for the backup of your data in case you experience a damaging event, such a server crash. This backup should also be stored offsite. After all, if the location where your server is housed undergoes a natural catastrophic event, it may not survive. Additionally, you want to make sure that this backup can be easily restored, and that you have an available resource to assist you with the restoration if needed.
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Another important preventative measure is to ensure that you have antivirus and monitoring software on your server and workstations in an effort to deter a malicious hacker from damaging your computer network.
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Over time, hardware devices can fail for various reasons. Have you given some thought to having pre-configured backup workstations available at your disposal? Do you use certain peripherals in your salon that are imperative to your operation, such as timers or receipt printers? If so, you should consider having extras on hand in the event that one becomes inoperable for some reason.
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It’s important to document your disaster recovery plan once you’ve laid out the procedures that should be followed if an unfortunate event presents itself. Equally important is testing the plan. Remember those fire drills you had to do every year as a child at school? Make sure that you train your staff on your plan, and that it is easy to understand and execute, especially during what might be a chaotic situation.
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Make a solid disaster recovery plan part of your New Year’s resolutions this year in order to alleviate the stress that you and your staff will undergo should you experience a technical calamity at your salon – you will surely thank yourself should an unfortunate event occur!
The actions that you take before, during and after an unforeseen event can make all the difference in terms of the impact it can have on your business.
