On demand is more than a mantra to the document processing industry, it has become the mandate as more and more companies move toward real-time processing operations, which enable them to take advantage of operational efficiencies. The benefits, which include reduced inventories and improved cash flow, are tremendous, however, so are the increased risks.
In order for real-time processing to pay dividends, everything must work in concert to consistently meet service-level commitments and match production flow with that of demand. Therefore, disasters need to be defined in terms more conducive to the on-demand processing environment. In other words, as your production systems evolve to take advantage of real-time production techniques, your disaster recovery plan also needs to evolve to correspond with them.
The first step in the evolution of your disaster recovery plan is to dispel the common misperception that your print-to-mail operations are covered by the corporate disaster recovery plan, when in reality that's not the case. The truth is, most company-wide disaster recovery plans are designed to protect data centers and computer operations, leaving your critical document processing applications unprotected. Many companies have come to realize this as software glitches, equipment malfunctions and production spikes have resulted in missed service-level commitments.
The next step is to redefine a disaster and the associated protection in terms of the needs of your real-time processing environment. As a case in point, it is common to think of disasters in terms of floods, hurricanes and fires. However, these events account for only three percent of business disruptions. The remaining 97% of interruptions are caused by software or hardware glitches, human error and equipment malfunctions. Thinking of disaster recovery in terms of insurance often helps to fully master this concept.
Traditional disaster recovery plans can be viewed in terms of a life insurance policy. For instance, the purpose of life insurance is to ensure a family can continue to function without financial disruption in the event of a death. Similarly, traditional disaster recovery plans are designed to ensure the survival of an organization in the event of a major disaster. These are typically infrequent or one-time occurrences.
Disasters that plague on-demand document processing, however, can be much less severe yet just as deadly with regard to meeting service-level commitments, cash flow and your organization's bottom line. Therefore, a disaster recovery plan for your critical document processing applications needs to be more in-line with that of homeowners' insurance. With print-to-mail disaster recovery, like a homeowner's policy, you can gain coverage for a wide range of potential production nightmares including full-blown disasters, equipment malfunctions or spikes in production that threaten your ability to meet service-level commitments.
Just like homeowners, your print-to-mail disaster recovery should provide flexibility. You should have the discretion to decide whether to safeguard all your applications or a select few. A thorough Business Impact Analysis (BIA) can help you identify your critical applications by assessing the risk and assigning a value to that risk. The result of a BIA is often quite different from industry to industry and company to company. However, a typical outcome of a BIA could find that a large retail chain may cover only its accounts payable processing. The reason is simple. Some leasing contracts lock rental rates as long as rent is paid on time. Therefore, a late check would result in a rent increase for all the retailer's locations. It's not hard to do the math in this situation.
Another frequently covered application is payroll processing. And while the cost of late payroll checks isn't as clear-cut, the risks are numerous. They include fines from federal and state Departments of Labor showing up on the government's audit radar, disgruntled employees and fines from breeches in union contracts.
A cross-section of industries such as utilities and universities cover invoice and statement processing to ensure positive cash flow. Insurance companies frequently protect member communication and claim processing. And, HCFA and HIPPA regulations are now mandating disaster recovery. Further-more, service bureaus are taking part to guard against spikes in production and to ensure meeting service-level commitments, securing customer satisfaction and loyalty. Your disaster recovery solution should give you the opportunity to determine the degree of shared-risk you're willing to take, affording you selectivity.
The good news is that print-to-mail disaster recovery has kept pace with document processing methods. Fractional disaster recovery is available to better help you reconcile protection needs with your budget. Today's print-to-mail plans take full advantage of the latest document management and data transfer technology to deliver around-the-clock protection of your critical applications.
The most recent development in the area of print-to-mail disaster recovery is capable of reducing the recovery time from days to hours. This is made possible by several factors. First, it unifies multiple platforms at your facility and your remote recovery site. This enables you to safely store critical printer resources at the remote facility to save bandwidth, time and storage cost. Second, it uses standard TCP/IP communications, which enable you to send information from your data center to your remote recovery facility quickly and easily. At the same time, this link provides a view into the recovery operation for real-time job status tracking. Most importantly, this approach to disaster recovery allows data to be simultaneously copied to both the production print and the recovery print queue for continuous, uninterrupted data backup. This provides immediate access to your resource files and up-to-the-minute print-image data for processing in the event of a disaster. These are also useful when a small failure at your production site places a service-level commitment at risk. In this instance, you gain the ability to process the application at your remote recovery facility without missing a beat.
As your processing technology advances, it is important to take time to re-evaluate your disaster recovery plan to ensure the short- and long-term health of your operation.
Jerry Montella is vice president of Sales and Marketing for Mail-Gard Concepts Inc., www.mail-gard.com.
