Since our childhood, we have been hearing this “Hope for the best and prepare for the worst.” We never know what is next in line for us, and similarly, this proves true with business. So much is going on globally, from legislative and administrative changes to pandemics, and companies have to be prepared for any natural or catastrophic disaster that they may face. Payroll heroes need to help their organizations go through this stage and convey a positive employee experience alongside being compliant with the laws. Taking a very recent example of COVID-19, which has been in the headlines since January 2020, is still catching fire everywhere. Employees are approached to telecommute; numerous workplaces have been shut for quite a while, and the economy has slacked down. This has raised concern amongst businesses and has forced them to think over their disaster recovery and business continuity plans.

“We can’t judge a ship by how well the crew performs in calm waters, we judge a ship by how well the crew performs in rough water.” – Simon Sinek.
The word disaster comes from old Italian where ‘Dis’ means terrible, and ‘Aster’ means the star that is a lousy star or something unfavorable. Disaster can happen anytime, and it’s imperative to be set up with a solid disaster recovery and business continuity plan, which would assist it from coming out of the disaster and keep it running smoothly.

Being payroll professionals, we understand how vital and critical payroll is as it is performed by the people and for the people. Imagine a situation where you have been processing thousands of payroll records, and your system crashes. All of your hard work is washed in a go, the data is lost, and what makes the situation even more unpleasant is that you have a deadline! How awful would this situation be? Payroll experts have now begun thoroughly considering this. More and more payroll bureaus are moving towards Cloud Software, which offers excellent value and is employee-friendly.

Here are a few points that portray how Cloud software can not only ease out your life but also offer you protection against any such hazard:

1. Data back-up and recovery: Your data is stored in a secured cloud environment, making it accessible worldwide. This enables you to back up and recover your data in case of any disaster. You can discuss the bespoke solution based on your requirements with your system vendor, and the service is available on-demand. By and large, system vendors have alternatives of full, incremental, and differential back-ups. If there should arise an occurrence of any coincidental information erasure, defiled data, or system failure, the data could be recuperated in moments.

2. Minimal Downtime: We know about our per hour administrative cost, yet have we at any point calculated how much does an hour of downtime costs to our business? Organizations are severely dependent on IT these days, and this goes well within the Payroll industry as well. Despite such advancements in technology, downtime can happen, and it’s essential to have a plan to manage your business downtime. Because cloud software works quickly on restoring data in any disaster, the company saves its cost to fix the systems. It protects itself from any significant impacts like revenue loss, compliance failure, customer dissatisfaction, and a damaged reputation caused due to downtime.

3. Cost Efficiency and Scalability: Compared to desktop-based systems, cloud-based software offers high scalability and cost-efficiency. In a payroll industry where payroll bureaus take charge to process thousands of payrolls monthly, it’s essential to have a system that offers you the flexibility to scale up as required. Cloud providers are all ready to support your growth. All you have to do is speak to your provider and get the additional resources, and pay only for what you use. In case of any disaster, cloud-based options offer you to recover all your data in few minutes; however, while considering any such solution, it is significant that a business thinks beyond the expense of the arrangement since it cost more to not have it.

4. Reliability: Cloud system providers are associated with data banks which ensures maximum availability of your data, and this makes it even faster to restore your lost or corrupted data.

5. Failover and Failback capabilities in the cloud:Failover is a process in which a system automatically transfers control to the same approach when it detects an outage. After a disaster maintenance period, failback starts and restores production to its original location. Thanks to the flexibility provided by cloud infrastructure, these processes become easy.

6. Cloud Service Level Agreement: Cloud Service Level Agreement (SLA) is a contract between parties that defines the services provided, the indicators associated with it, acceptable and unacceptable service levels. They additionally include details on recourse and penalty in the event of any inability to deliver the service promised. To have a foolproof disaster recovery and business continuity plan, we must understand the benefits that cloud systems can provide. The good news is you with adequate planning. One can navigate through any disaster powerfully.