Founded a quarter century ago as a unit of General Electric, Agility Recovery, now headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, forged its reputation by offering the largest corporations plans and resources to recover from natural or man-made disasters. In 2004, the company broadened its target market by launching ReadySuite; a turn-key and much more affordable recovery system.
Now Agility claims more than 20,000 businesses as clients. According to a statement on its website (www.agilityrecovery.com), “we’ve recovered literally thousands of businesses from every possible type of disaster. And we have never failed.”
Scott Teel, a representative from Agility Recovery, will give business owners the ins and outs of what to do when disaster strikes at a Princeton SCORE workshop Tuesday, April 8, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the Sayreville Public Library. Small business consultant Carmen Morris of Princeton Score will also participate. For more information on the free workshop, go to www.princetonscore.org.
Teel will also participate in an online seminary on “Social Media and Disaster Recovery” on Wednesday, April 9, at 2 p.m.
Many companies count on social media, texting, and the ubiquitous cell phone as the cornerstone of their communications when disaster strikes. But as the Agility Recovery experts maintain, some planning is still required to integrate those elements into a disaster recovery plan:
“As with other aspects of your business, diversifying your resources is a much safer bet. After a disaster strikes, companies should not rely on a single means of communication with staff, customers and vendors, such as one e-mail server or a single phone system with no backup. Additionally, key leadership personnel shouldn’t use the same cell phone carrier. If a devastating storm strikes the area and everyone in the office uses a single or common cell phone carrier, communication efforts will be significantly disrupted and the company won’t have a way to bring other employees into the recovery.
“In a crisis, texting often becomes one of the most reliable means of communicating with staff and vendors.If your recovery plan calls for leaders to communicate through texting during and after an emergency, make sure their phones enable texts and that each person is comfortable writing and reading texts.
“If cell phone service goes down, your leadership team should be able to reach each other through landline phones. However, for this to happen, you must make sure each person actually has a landline at home.”
