The bottom line is that when your networks and systems are down and you’re not prepared to respond, business stops.

Your Customers Want Service—Not Excuses

Believe it or not, nearly 50% of customers say they would switch to a new provider within a single day of experiencing poor customer service; 79% would switch within one week. That being the case, it is critical that business owners and decision makers do everything within their power to ensure they are able to provide their customers superior service—even in the event disaster strikes.

By developing a holistic disaster recovery plan, executives get the comfort that comes with knowing they’ll be able to recover from almost any imaginable scenario. For this reason, it comes as no surprise that the global disaster recovery-as-a-service (DRaaS) market is projected to grow from $1.42 billion in 2015 to $11.92 billion in 2020—boasting an insane 52.9% compound annual growth rate during that time, according to MarketsandMarkets.

Despite all this, three out of four businesses still have inadequate disaster recovery plans in place. Why?

The Need for a Flexible DR Plan

Businesses can’t simply expect to deploy cookie-cutter disaster recovery plans and think their work is done. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. Great disaster recovery plans are almost always works in progress; advisory and attention are what makes them work.

For starters, the needs of every company are different—even if they’re in the same industry, serve the same customers, and operate in the same region. One company might pour a ton of resources into developing new products while their direct competitor invests heavily in marketing initiatives.

On top of that, business processes change constantly and disaster recovery plans need to accommodate that evolution. For example, forward-thinking organizations are quick to leverage new technologies and platforms. A business might have crafted the best disaster recovery plan of all time a year ago, but once processes and workflows change—even slightly—the plan can become immediately outdated. What’s more, priorities can shift—and they often do. Things that were important when plans were created could become considerably lower priorities within a matter of months.

When disaster recovery plans aren’t updated on a regular basis, executives can’t expect business will continue as usual in the event they’re forced to incur unplanned downtime for any reason.

If you want to guarantee you’ll be able to serve your customers no matter what, it’s not enough to simply create a great disaster recovery plan that’s built based on standards. Your plan needs to be unique to your organization.

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Beyond that, you need to revisit your plan on a regular basis to make sure it’s still meeting your needs. You also need to train employees to ensure they are able to execute. Finally, you need to fully test your plan on a regular basis to see how your company is able to respond during a mock emergency scenario. In doing so, you’ll get the peace of mind that comes with knowing your plan actually works—which sure beats having one that just looks good on paper. What’s more, the resulting data from these kinds of test runs can help make your plan even stronger moving forward.

It’s true that great disaster recovery plans can be tricky to build. But the good news is you don’t have to go it on your own. Partnering with the right disaster recovery provider—one that doesn’t treat you like you’re the same as every other business—gives you the peace of mind that comes with knowing you’ll be able to serve your customers thoroughly, regardless of any unpredictable events that may throw a wrench in your operations. The right provider can also provide disaster recovery training, making you more prepared to respond to an actual crisis.

The more attention you pay to your disaster recovery plan, the more confident you can be that you’ll be able to keep your doors open—even if Mother Nature makes your front door inaccessible.