John Kucera founded Carolina Trade Exchange (CTE) in 2010. It’s a membership organization that helps businesses barter products and services in a safe, secure, standardized system. Because the IRS treats trade credits the same as dollars, CTE sends monthly statements and an annual 1099 to members and electronically reports to the IRS. The transaction data is vitally important to CTE and its members.
In 2011, John arrived at work and found the “blue screen of death” on the server. He maintained an optimistic attitude while analyzing the problem; after all, his software provider backed up the data nightly. Then the other shoe dropped. Apparently, the provider’s backup system erased the previous backup to clear storage for the new data each night. The server crashed during this erasure. Approximately 90 percent of the data that fueled John’s business had disappeared instantly.
Over the next five months, John and a steadfast employee worked nights and weekends reaching out to members, requesting and collecting the monthly statements previously sent, and manually rebuilding the company’s data. The business fully recovered and has experienced a 40 to 50 percent growth year over year since the crisis.
John and CTE learned a lot from the experience and advise other business owners to simulate data disasters to ensure that their systems and processes work as intended. “Test your vendors. Find out what the recovery workload looks like,” John said. “Fire, medic, and rescue are always simulating disasters. You’ve got to do that in your own business.” CTE now runs simulations once a quarter obtaining an additional layer of protection.
Melisa Graham is the communications director at SPARK Publications, editor of b2bTRIBE magazine, author of Used Cow for Sale (a collection of poetry, mom, and wife.
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