Here we are, Florida in August, headed to the height of hurricane season. This time of year always makes me think about being ready for the possibility that nature might decide to wreak havoc. It is also the time of year when I ask businesses about their disaster readiness plan. Of course you should not wait until a season draws near, you should always be ready with a disaster recovery and business continuity plan. This is not just for your digitally created materials but also your paper based information. How would you recover that? One answer is to convert it using scanners to capture that paper based information and transform it into a digital format that can then be saved and managed properly. When you do this, and now control digitally, you have a better chance of recovering it and getting your business back online should chaos strike.
In my view, businesses who are taking the proactive approach in capturing and converting their paper based information to a digital form are in better position to address disaster than those who are not. Think about what has happened in the past, your past, with natural disasters like hurricanes, floods and wild fires or even man made like fire and flooding due to human error or intent. How would you recover from a fire that wipes out not only the building but all of your paper based client files where in a digital environment, you would have a back-up copy somewhere safe and off premise that you can access and restore. The best way to address disaster is to prevent it but in the case chaos does strike, you can plan and prepare for it.
If as an organization, you are ready to move forward and are finding yourself stuck or unfocused and are not sure where to begin or what to do next, seek professional assistance and/or training to get you started.
What say you? Do you have a story to tell? What are your thoughts on this topic? Do you have a topic of interest you would like discussed in this forum? Let me know.
Bob Larrivee, Director and Industry Advisor – AIIM
I will be teaching the AIIM Capture program on August 23-24 in Silver Spring, MD and I will be speaking at the following events:
NIRMA 2011 in Las Vegas – August 15 – 17, 2011
Sbcon11 Virtual Conference on September 8, 2011
ARMA’11 in Washington, DC – October 17-19, 2011
Email me: blarrivee@aiim.org
Follow me on Twitter – BobLarrivee
www.aiim.org/training
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