All Businesses should have a simple but thorough Disaster Recovery Plan.  The plan should be designed to allow the business to recover from any type of disaster, large or small.  All of the key employees within the business should know their specific roles in the recovery process.  The business’s strategy for backing up their critical business data forms a very important role in the recovery process.

It is amazing how much time is wasted each week by non-technical staff attempting to perform technical tasks within their businesses.  For example, when the internet goes down there are a few basic troubleshooting steps that should be performed by someone within the business (click here for a list of those steps).  Beyond this, The business’s outside support technicians' should call the Internet Service Provider directly to assure a quick resolution to the issue. This process should be the same for all of the technology vendors.  It is too common for the Office Manager (or someone else within the business) to work for hours as a gopher between the outside IT company and the vendor … when the issue is generally resolved quickly when the vendor and the IT people first speak to each other directly.