In the land of going paperless, of having no files and no hard copies comes backlash.

Paperless, what a great concept, no huge files on the desk, no paper cuts, no lost files, everything at your finger tips. How convenient. There are many advantages to not having files and data lying in the open for anyone to see.

But what happens in a disaster when power, phones and all IT systems are lost? Have you and your clients thought of everything?

Unfortunately for one IT services company, a power surge did occur. This company thought they were prepared. The following procedures were in place at the time of the power surge:

· UPS (uninterrupted power supply – battery),

· gas/diesel powered generators,

· written procedures to follow should power fail.

Shouldn’t this be enough? Apparently not. A problem with the generator occurred, and when their system went down, so did IT services to every one of their customers. The system was down for over an hour, and some elements, including phones, were out for several hours more.

Being service oriented, the company wanted to try to contact their clients to let them know what had occurred. In our world of wireless technology, they went for their cell phones. But lo and behold, they had no client list. Everything was stored on the computers that were now inactive.

Would you and your clients think of keeping hard copies of client contact information in case of a situation like this?