Business Disaster Preparedness--Part 1

Natural disasters!

Unpreparedness for any disaster, man-made or natural, has the potential for putting an indexer out of business permanently. At the very least, you may have to completely rebuild your clientele if you aren't prepared.

What are some of the things that can happen to indexers? Well, let me list situations and events that have actually happened to me over the years. I have no doubt that other experienced indexers could add to the list!

1. The telephone line went out for several days, making it impossible for clients to call with projects.

2. My ISP server went down for several days, making it impossible for clients to email me for communication about existing projects, or future prospects. Also, I couldn't communicate with them about current in-house projects.

3. The client's server went down, making it impossible for me to email them, retrieve PDF files, and so on.

4. The client had severe weather damage to their facilities. Editors were on their own for several weeks, at home.

5. My hard drive failed.

6. My next hard drive failed.

7. My hard drive after that one failed. Yeah, I am very hard on hard drives for whatever reason!

8. My operating system crashed.

10. My dedicated fax machine died.

11. My motherboard died.

12. My printer bit the dust.

13. My next printer eventually couldn't keep up with the demand from it.

14. My ink cartridges for my printers run out in the middle of printing books.

15. My highlighters dry up.

16. My telephone died.

17. I dropped and killed my cellphone.

18. My CD writer died.

19. My DVD/CD writer died.

20. "They" did away with 5.25 inch floppy disks.

21. "They" have started doing away with 3.50 inch floppy disks.

22. My ISP couldn't keep up with the demand for speed.

23. The new ISP discontinued service in this area.

24. The next new ISP regularly goes out for short periods of time, yet it's the best we have available in my area.

25. My verrrry comfortable chair broke.

26. My next verrrrry comfortable chair broke.

27. My husband broke his foot in the middle of summer--dumping everything on me in the middle of my busiest part of the year.

27. I had major surgery during a semi-busy season.

29. The electric regularly goes out.

30. We have brown outs regularly.

31. Email bounces from my clients because my ISP believes their emails are spam.

32. Index files trash out along the way to the client.

33. The client doesn't know what to do with the index file, or how to download it, or open it.