To keep your marketing campaigns running smoothly, it’s important to factor disaster recovery and business continuity into your planning efforts. Unforeseen circumstances can quickly disrupt even the best-laid plans. These events can be widespread, such as severe weather or disease outbreaks, or more localized, such as power outages or internet service provider downtime. Whether large or small, any of these events can put all of your efforts on hold while you wait for normalcy to be restored.
Since there’s no telling when these challenges may strike, pre-planning is key. Fortunately, there are several practical steps you can take to bolster your marketing efforts against unforeseen challenges.
Redundant Facilities
One crucial precaution you can take is to utilize redundant facilities. A redundant facility duplicates critical functions, providing a planned backup in the event that one facility must shut down or is unable to operate properly. Ideally, organize these facilities in different geographies. Weather events and other disasters are less likely to impact both locations simultaneously if they are far enough apart.
Digital Campaigns Too
While we tend to think of continuity planning primarily for print campaigns, digital campaigns need backup plans as well. For example, an electrical outage or server crash at a facility can prevent a campaign from moving forward. It’s important to have another facility pre-identified that can pick up the job quickly. Implementing secure, shared server solutions that allow other employees and partners to access files is also important to avoid downtime.
Matrix is well-positioned to serve our customers no matter what circumstances arise. Our production facilities are strategically placed in completely different parts of the country with diverse weather patterns.
Expanded Capabilities
To better meet our customers’ needs, Matrix recently introduced several updates to our New York and Texas production facilities to align processes and systems. Both locations now boast a fully integrated traffic area to ensure our operations are perfectly mirrored. This uniform setup is crucial for disaster recovery strategies. Should the need arise, we can seamlessly transfer jobs from one facility to the other, thanks to our systems and hardware being identical at both sites. Additionally, we have introduced work-in-progress boards in both locations, giving a crystal-clear view of workflows to manage projects more efficiently and avoid any potential delays. New printing and inserting equipment have also been added to facilitate more efficient processes.
It’s important to select partners for your print and digital campaigns who are well-versed in disaster recovery and business continuity best practices. While we hope to never have to implement these steps, you can rest assured knowing that we’re ready if the unexpected does happen. Contact us today to get started.
