Business telecommunications and IT systems

As a telephony and IT service provider, du Pré plc has expertise in helping UK businesses implement disaster recovery and flexible working practices, including home working, to their business environment. 

In the current climate every working day lost can have extreme effects on the company. How would your business react if you were unable to take an important sales call and that potential customer went to your rival instead? Here we explain disaster recovery and flexible working in more detail and show the effects it can have on a business

Why have a disaster recovery plan?

A disaster recovery plan should be seen as a way to keep your business operational and giving yourself the reassurance that no matter what happens, your customers will be able to contact you. Having a disaster recovery plan is also a way of protecting your revenue. It is worth considering what affect would it have to the business if your current and potential customers could not contact you for a week? Some businesses could cope, but how long would it take until it affected your business?

What is a disaster recovery plan?

There will be a time when circumstances may arise where getting to the office may be difficult or near impossible, due to poor weather conditions or even an incident at your premises. It is for these unplanned events where a disaster recovery plan can make a difference.

A disaster recovery plan is a set of actions where the company can continue to operate as normal without the need of being based in the main office if a ‘disaster’ was to happen. The plan can be simple to set up and doesn’t need to be a complicated procedure. The ideal disaster recovery plan will incorporate ways of staff being able to communicate with customers, as your number one priority, whilst still allowing staff access to all business critical applications securely from home or other suitable locations.

Making disaster recovery work - communicating with customers

To make disaster recovery work for your business du Pré will work with you to ensure you have suitable resources and equipment in place to allow your disaster recovery solution to work. To enable staff to communicate with customers your busi ness could consider a VoIP telephone system.

A VoIP telephone system removes the need to contact third parties to get call forwards placed and allows staff to still make outbound calls without having to use personal mobiles or home phones. Customers and staff can still contact each other using the same numbers and internal calls between staff are free of charge.

du Pré have their own branded VoIP telephone system called du Pré Connect, which allows users to take their phones home and make and receive calls in the same manner they would in the office. There is no need for any reprogramming or forwards to be requested, the phone is simply plugged into the broadband router, connected to a power supply and is then fully operational. Even if staff are not able take their physical desk phone home, there is a soft phone option available which allows them to make calls using their PC or laptop using a USB headset.

Making disaster recovery work - accessing business critical information

As well as being able to speak to customers, it is important that staff can have secure access to their work and company files. This can be achieved allowing each member of staff secure VPN access to your server, this will enable staff to access emails and the same files they would in the office.

There is also the option of using Cloud technology to store and access company data. The principal involves the company server being based in a secure data centre, and each employee having a section allocated on that server. By using a VPN connection each user can then access the server and work from any location where there is an internet connection. The benefits of this mean that should your office bit hit by flooding or fire, then all your data is not affected.

du Pré can help you implement the best remote access solution for your business, giving your staff safe and secure remote access to keep your business connected.

Flexible Working

If your business has a solution allowing staff to work from outside the office when a disaster happens, there is also the opportunity to implement flexible working when there isn’t a disaster. Flexible working practice can help maintain a good work/life balance and help increase staff efficiency.

Flexible working is being used by more and more businesses in the UK. Flexible working is especially useful to staff have who have a long commute to the office, meaning that time usually spent in the car or on the train can now be used to work. Home working can also reduce staff days lost by employees who need time off to care for children or other events, which usually would have resulted in holiday being taken.

According to the TUC, allowing employees to work from home or away from the normal office environment can:

• Increase staff retention
• Improve morale and productivity
• Make the business more attractive to potential new employees
• Reduce absence, sickness and travel costs
• Reduce infrastructure costs – such as parking, office space etc

Implementing disaster recovery and flexible working for your business

du Pré are specialists is providing UK businesses with flexible working and disaster recovery solutions. du Pré have their own flexible working and disaster recovery solution in place, so can offer real advice and solutions to your business. So whether you want to be able to keep your business running no matter what, or would like to allow your employees to be able to work from home, speak to du Pré.