The Importance of a Good Disaster Recovery Plan

Having a disaster recovery plan is like an insurance policy for your business, helping you get back on your feet as quickly and cost effectively as possible. Whether natural or man-made, disasters of any magnitude can strike at any time. Severe weather, technological viruses and crashes, as well as fire, and flood can all strike occur without warning. While it may seem like a hassle up front, a good disaster recovery plan can save your business should you need to call up on it.



A great example of this is the recent BP oil spill. Had they had a plan in place they may have been able to recover much quicker, saving not only themselves large quantities of money, but the surrounding industries as well. With damages estimated in the tens of billions, not to mention the PR nightmare they’re now facing – we’re sure BP wishes they had thought ahead.

The First Steps
First, make sure top-level executives within your company are on board and involved in the process. Their support is vital to the creation of a good plan. Step two is the creation phase. This is a slow methodical process and requires that each department be broken down into its smallest units, separating the function of each and analyzing it for its importance to your business. If this sounds like something that might be too much for you to handle internally, fear not. Many companies choose to outsource this task to an expert who has the experience and perspective necessary to come up with a comprehensive plan for your company. If you choose to do it in house however, the first thing you’ll need is a Business Impact Analysis (BIA). A BIA collects all of the information relating to your business and ranks it in order of importance. Then each function should be assigned a process of continuity.

Next, you will want to design an emergency procedure. This should include contact information for all employees, vendors, and partners as well as a comprehensive list of all equipment for all departments. These lists should be kept up to date and reviewed often.

Next Steps

• Designate and prepare an alternate location that can be used as an alternate workspace should you need it.
  


• Set up all data back-up and recovery processes. These should be kept on hard disks and stored off-site or uploaded to a 3rd party server. All data should be backed up regularly. The frequency depends on your business – some choose to do this in real time, some weekly, and others monthly.
  


• Provisions should be added (if not included already) to the Service Level Agreements (SLC) with your suppliers, vendors, and other businesses you engage with. This reduces liability risk if you fail to deliver due to a crisis.
  


• Hold regular ‘disaster drills’ to check the viability of your plan and backup systems. It is crucial that you do this prior to experiencing a disaster. So many companies (roughly 76%) never test their systems. The very damaging downside to this is that when and if it comes time to use it, they find that their plan is inadequate and/or incomplete, resulting in huge financial losses and downtime.
  

Adapted from How Disaster Recovery Plans Work, Dave Roos posted here.

EDI: How Low Can Your TCO Go?

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See how Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) Transaction Manager for Sage PFW ERP, powered by TrueCommerce, can save you up to 60% on your EDI Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). (1)

Painless, Easy and Affordable! EDI is a widely adopted form of electronic commerce and is required by many large enterprises. EDI Transaction Manager, powered by TrueCommerce, is a painless, easly, and affordable way to:

• Import purchase orders with the click of a button
• Reduce data entry mistakes and save on administration costs
• Export and send invoices directly from Accounts Receivable

Backed by free and unlimited support services, (2) EDI Transaction Manager comes with no annual maintenance fees and free software updates.

Your invited to a free Sage Webcast:

"Reduce Your EDI Total Cost of Ownership With TrueCommerce Integrated with Sage PFW"

See how other companies have lowered their total cost of owning EDI by up to 60%!

August 4, 2010

• 12:00-1:00 PM CT
• 3:00 - 4:00 PM CT

Register today!

(1) Compared to other EDI providers. TrueCommerce does not charge annual subscription or maintenance fees, or AS2 license fees, mailbox fees, peak hour surcharges or delimiter conversion fees. EDI software updates are free as is support. No annual contract is required and there are no early termination fees.

(2) Free and unlimited support on EDI Transaction Manager is provided by TrueCommerce and is not applicable to any Sage product or upgrade.

The Scoop on Windows 7

Now available, Windows 7 is the upgrade from Windows Vista and XP. In the near future XP will stop supporting this operating system so migrating to Windows 7 is inevitable. However, before you install it, here are some points to consider:

• New PCs can be ordered with Win7 already installed.
  


• Upgrades from Vista to Win7 can take a long time and may be difficult.
  


• It is faster than XP, and can work on older PC’s, but you cannot upgrade from XP.
  


• Win7 offers scheduled backup / defragmentation routines.
  


• Microsoft no longer supports XP.
  


• New installs only take about 30 minutes and it will find most device drivers, or you can use XP/Vista drivers.
  


• Upgrades will take a few hours, you can only upgrade from Vista, and you’ll need to do some system clean up after.

If you have questions or want help installing or upgrading to Windows 7, call our office.

FRx Replacement - Sage Intelligence

Sage Intelligence will soon be introduced as the ideal FRx replacement product for Sage PFW and Sage MAS 90/200/500. On target to be released by the end of this year, Sage Intelligence offers powerful and easy to use graphical financial reporting capabilities to access business-critical information, and makes complex reporting easy using a new report designer. Going beyond General Ledger reporting needs, Sage Intelligence will provide Business Intelligence across the entire Sage PFW and MAS system. Sage will discontinue shipping FRx with new license sales by the end of 2010, and will not include FRx in future releases of their products.


With Sage Intelligence you will be better able to:

• Quickly identify and respond to trends using sophisticated, customizable dashboards.
  


• Empower your staff with timely, meaningful information and trend reports.
  


• Easily create in-depth financial, operations, customer, and vendor reports.
  


• Efficiently view, manipulate, analyze, and distribute reports in a familiar Excel format.
  


• Extract up-to-the-minute high level summaries, account groupings, or transaction details.
  


• Effortlessly consolidate data from multiple companies, divisions, and databases.
  


• Streamline customized work in Excel.

Sage PFW and MAS customers on plan will be provided with a trade-in option for existing FRx licenses. Details on this program will be provided very soon.

What’s New in Microsoft Office 2010?

Microsoft Office 2010 has many new features that allow you to get the most out of your software. Some of the new aspects include:

• A new preview before you paste feature.
  


• Enhanced navigation, search tools, new page versions and wiki linking.
  


• Improved Navigation Pane to find documents easier and faster.
  


• Co-authoring capabilities allowing multiple people to open and edit the same document simultaneously.

Media & PowerPoint 2010

• Improved picture and media editing.
  


• New artistic effects and a background removal tool.
  


• Open Type typography.
  


• Easily trim, add fades and effects to videos.
  


• Broadcast Slideshow instantly via the web.

Excel & Access 2010

• New visualization tools.
  


• Dynamically filter data in a PivotTable or PivotChart to display only the relevant details.
  


• Design your own database using Application Parts, adding prebuilt components with just a few clicks.

Outlook 2010

• Improved Conversation View and Management tools.
  


• Perform multi-step tasks such as reply and delete within a single click.

Web

• Easily post files to SharePoint or Windows Live SkyDrive and then access and edit them from virtually anywhere.
  


• New powerful tools for Windows phones.
  


• SharePoint Workspace 2010 enables offline updates to documents.

The most important piece of information you should know is that Microsoft will no longer support Office 2003. We encourage any that are still operating on the older version to upgrade to 2010.

If you have questions or need any additional support with transitioning to Office 2010 please let us know. We would love to help you.

PivotTables: What are they and how do I use them for my business?

Register today!

We are thrilled to announce that PositiveVision is offering monthly lunchtime webinars. Join us on Tuesday, July 20th to learn about the little-known, yet powerful, Microsft Office Excel PivotTable feature, which organizes, summarizes and analyzes your data to recveal its meanings.

Excel's PivotTables feature is one of the most powerful, yet least used features in Excel. Join Excel expert Bob Baran for this 45 minute lunchtime webiar as he demostrates numerous features and shortcuts that will save you time and allow you to see data transformed into valuable information.

Date: Tuesday, July 20th
Time: 12-12:45 PM CT
R.S.V.P. Although this webinar is complimentary, registratin is required. To register click here or contact our office at: 800.559.1323.

Strategies for Recovery: Streamlining Document Management

*Adapted from Document Management Strategies & Keeping up with the Times, by Cassandra Carnes http://www.dpsmagazine.com/

For decades, companies have relied on paper hardcopies to carry out their business processes. However, change has been on the horizon for the past several years. Natural disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina, and growing environmental trends such as going green, are beginning to shed light on the disadvantages of paper-based document archive, management, and storage systems. Additionally, the increase in telecommuting, advancements in electronic document management solutions, and popularity of portable computers has introduced a digital workflow to the business industry. From internal communications; business-to-business; and business-to-consumer, advancing document management technology is helping businesses streamline operations, eliminate paper filing, and reduce data input. Studies show that the document management sector grows nearly 20 percent annually, making it an area of interest for all companies.


Data is the driving factor behind almost every organization. Therefore the proper management of that data is crucial to success and growth. In a study done by Coopers & Lybrand, they found that 90% of critical business information exists only on paper and that 70% of today’s businesses would fail within three weeks if they suffered a catastrophic loss of their paper-based records. Additionally, more research done by Delphi Group noted that 90% of typical office tasks revolve around the gathering and distribution of paper documents, 15% of all papers are lost, and 30% of our time is used trying to find them. Furthermore they found that companies spend an average of $25,000 to fill a typical four-drawer filing cabinet and about $2,000 a year to maintain it. With statistics like these, a document management solution makes obvious sense for those looking to improve their company operations.


Document management providers are looking at the technology, and ensuring their solutions account for emerging trends, new compliance regulations, and support for a diverse range of document types. Advanced networking and document management integration allows users to scan to email, document management systems, or a shared folder on a network. The files are then printed on demand.

Benefits of an integrated document management solution include:

• Elimination of paper (and the costs that go with it) from your office.


• The ability to archive, process retrieve and research document transactions from your desk, increasing productivity and enhancing communication at the same time.


• Automated processing of documents, reducing redundant data input.


• The automatic capture, transformation and delivery of enterprise transactions to recipients in a variety of formats and distribution methods.

Adopting a document capture and management strategy is vital to a business’ competitive strategy. The value of a document management solution is limitless as organizations will find themselves improving business processes, administration of information and reducing unnecessary costs and workflow.