By Kirk Drake | March 14, 2013

How do I Improve my RTO, Recovery Time Objective?

If you are looking for ways to improve your RTO or Recovery Time Objective you have come to the right spot.

The RTO is basically a measure of how long it will take you to recover. Generally, the more electronic transactions or technology related your business the higher your risk from data loss.  Unlike the limited options for improving your RPO, there are quite a few options to improve your RTO and the will depend on the type of business process.

Types of Business Processes

Essential there are some key business process types that directly correlate to the primary strategies used to reduce the RTO. They include:

• Technology – Server or Internet Based
• Technology – Telecom Based
• Technology – Data Communication Based
• Manual – Paper Processes
• Phone – Call Center
• Shipping – Delivering a product
• Financial – Completing the transaction
• Human – Requiring human decision making

Almost all business processes fall into one of those categories.  The main limiting factors almost always come down to People, Process, Data, Infrastructure, and Connectivity.  If any one of them is missing, the recovery process generally won’t work.  Once you have completed your Business Impact Analysis and you have identified the key business processes and the key supporting infrastructure you should be in a place to focus on improving the RTO.

Technology Based Process – Credit Union Cloud

If zero is your goal and you the business process is heavily reliant on technology – move your application to the cloud and put it in active – active state with a couple thousand miles of separation. Basically, you will want the database to be running on a SQL Geo-Cluster and to be real time replicated between the various hosting sites. You might still have some data loss based on the laws of physics (the data still has to travel thousands of miles) but it should be pretty minimal.

Technology Based Telecom Process –

The key here is to have redundant and diverse phone system choices.  One good option is to go the hosted VoIP route.  If you don’t want to outsource your phone system than you will want to have a backup plan and backup phones at your hot site and be practice (Disaster Recovery Test) your failover sequence.  Create a written procedure for rerouting your phones to an alternate location.  Make sure you cover not just the phone system but any audio response systems, supporting infrastructure like Voice PRIs or SIP Trunks, and you have a call tree all ready setup.

Technology – Data Communication Based

If many of your business rely on your branch connectivity, internet or some other connection.  Making sure you have these connections at your backup site is key.  Click here to read about key ways to evaluate your telecom redundancy.  Generally, the following business process will rely on your connectivity.

• Website Hosting
• Online Banking
• E-mail
• Browsing the internet or SAAS solutions like Mortgage Bot or others
• Credit Union VPNs – ATM, Debit, Credit, Federal Reserve or others

Manual Paper Processes

To improve your manual process make sure the process is well documented and that your hotsite has sample forms, printers, check stock and anything else you would need to perform the process quickly.

Phone – Call Center

Call centers can be the lifeline for many organizations.    Without solid failover plans phones go unanswered and members or customers get unhappy.   Our recommendation to improve the RTO of Call Centers is to A) Allow employees to work from home B)have a hotsite with Guaranteed Workspace C) Use a shared branching or third-party call center to handle overflow D) Use a mobile trailer.  Each of these options will improve your RTO quickly on one of your most important business centers.

Shipping

If shipping loan documents or a finished good are a key part of your business process – we recommend improving your RTO by either going to electronic document signing or work out arrangements with alternate shipping companies.   We have also used FedEx Custom Critical to pick up data and ship emergency supplies around the US in the same day.  An important note – your facility needs to be setup and cleared by FedEx prior to shipping something and the process usually takes several months.

Financial

Almost all business have a financial aspect so this is a key area.  Being able to continue to perform Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable or switch settlement can be key to keeping the lights on and avoiding fraud in disasters. Again, make sure you have good written procedures but also make sure your hot site has the appropriate spreadsheets, forms, check stock, printing and mailing supplies to keep things moving.

Human

This is where pandemic plans and communication trees become really important.  After-all pretty much every business relies on people for something. Making sure your employees have an alternate work site and plan along with either a Crisis Management Notification System or hosted exchange (that way you can e-mail throughout the disaster) is really key.  Put these things in place and you will shave valuable recovery time off of your disaster.

Process

Our experience is that you should start with a Risk Assessment to determine the RTO goals for each system or business process. Then look at the choices of technology for either an individual system or focus on the overall risk of all systems. You probably will want to be granular in your solution selection as you won’t have infinite budget to simply replicate everything and all data is not created equal. As you pick the solutions you will then need to match the offsite tools and bandwidth with the solution to make sure you have the right aggregate approach. Do all that and you should be able to hit your RTO’s at the micro and macro levels and sleep soundly at night.

Are you also concerned about how to calculate and plan for improving your RPO, Recovery Point Objectives?

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