Engineering a "Plan B" Payments Strategy
Hurricane Season Renews Focus on Disaster
Recovery Planning
No one thinks it will happen to them, until disaster strikes and they are left to wonder why they weren't better prepared. Corporate finance departments are no different. We have become so dependent on our information systems and mission-critical business processes operating with fluid precision in the background. Always up, always on. The risk of losing that sense of safety and reliability can seem obscure.
For a moment, imagine the unthinkable: your business is devastatingly powerless due to disaster beyond anyone's control — a hurricane, a flood, an act of arson, electrical failure, violence in the workplace, an earthquake or airborne disease.
Recognizing the Impact
Recent headlines of natural disaster and terrorist threat across the globe have
business owners recognizing the impact that a serious and unexpected incident
could have on their processes and production. Events of the past few months, in
particular, have heightened interest in establishing formal disaster recovery
plans in the event of such catastrophes.
When it comes to your payment processes, the requirement is no different. How will your ability to process and transact critical disbursements, such as employee and vendor payments, be impacted if server-based software or payment capabilities go down? A little planning goes a long way to ensure compliance with employee and union payment contracts or vendor service agreements. Having a comprehensive disaster recovery plan in place is vital to maintaining your company's reputation and revenues in the face of unplanned adversity.
Mitigating the Risk
For every business, the impact of disruptive events can be mitigated with
effective, outsourced back-up and recovery strategies, and ample IT and
information security safeguards. Effectively outlining steps necessary to
recover from a crisis helps to ensure that critical business operations can
continue despite disruptive events.
Bottomline's Disaster Recovery Service is a simple, inexpensive insurance policy for outsourced business continuity. Regardless of your business size, our on-staff experts install and test your payment processes, putting in place fixed procedures which give you the confidence that your payments will be made even if your facilities or networks are closed or damaged. Bottomline validates the processes through periodic testing and provides step-by-step manuals so your staff is fully prepared to redirect payment production to our system, if necessary.
These disaster recovery services are hosted at an AT&T Internet Data Center featuring state-of-the-art security, including restricted physical and electronic access, extensive fire and smoke detection systems, and redundancy and fail-over capabilities. Bottomline's world-class fulfillment partner provides multiple production sites, each equipped with redundant data systems to meet the most demanding print and mail requirements.
Don't wait until it's too late. To learn more about Bottomline's Disaster Recovery Services, call us at 1-800-472-1321.