Minimize Risks of Salesforce Downtime? Let's face it, in our technologically heavy business universe, nothing runs 24/7/365 without downtime. We love the tech, but it requires maintenance and upgrades like any other machine. What happens when your Salesforce Support plans an outage to do this maintenance? Salesforce Maintenance needs to be done periodically. What happens to your sales operations when that occurs? If you don't prepare for it, you'll have some problems. What if it's an Unplanned Salesforce Downtime? Something like that should be in everyone's playbook since, as much as we like to think we have control over events, some things that happen are beyond our control. Weather, service, and network outages, widespread power failures, and these disasters will cause big trouble. You need to be prepared. Data access loss always happens at the worst possible time! Think of your worst-case scenario and prepare for it.
What Are The Types Of System Downtime?
While nobody likes any downtime, There is a lesser of two evils.
- Maintenance or planned downtime is a necessary and unavoidable procedure to upgrade, check, or repair the system to maintain its reliable operation. Planned downtime is scheduled, and contingencies are prepared for. There is an advanced warning to customers and updates during the work.
- Unplanned downtime or failure results from a system malfunction, force majeure, or a hacker attack. This is a disaster with likely far-ranging consequences.
Since Salesforce is the leading CRM system and a leading sales automatization software, its operation is Key to the business of many companies, and unplanned Salesforce downtimes inevitably result in a loss of revenue.
Evaluate The Impact Of Salesforce Downtime On Business
One of the critical responsibilities of management is to keep the business machine running. One of their tools is a Service Level Agreement from their many providers. The gold standard, the ideal goal, is the "Five Nines." This means that the provider promises service 99.999% of the time. Though that may seem like an unattainably lofty goal given the nature of machines, it remains what many providers of all kinds promise. But wait a minute. 99.999% uptime means 0.1% downtime. Hold on, that's 5 minutes and 16 seconds of downtime per year. It doesn't seem like a lot, but Murphy's Law states that those 5 minutes and 16 seconds will occur precisely at the wrong time.
Salesforce offers a Master Subscription Agreement, not an SLA. And so, they promise to "use commercially reasonable efforts to make the online Services available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week". Salesforce also states they have proven reliability of 99.9+% uptime record for years.
Clearly, a 99.999% uptime SLA is not the same as a 99.9+% MSA. So clients of Salesforce need to make sure that they're prepared for both planned and unplanned downtime.
How To Minimize Risks Of Salesforce Downtime?
Of course, the prudent course under any circumstances is to minimize the damage. This requires exploring the worst-case scenarios for your business. It is more helpful information and will accustom you to the "disaster scenario" you need to understand.
Prepare For Unplanned Downtime
No matter what the SLA or lack thereof, businesses need to be prepared for the disruption of service when downtime happens. Because it will happen, while the details seem essential, the plan to deal with downtime must be complete and well-rehearsed.
Make a plan. The Key is the left hand knowing what the right hand is planning and doing. The various departments must work together to limit the damage and speed recovery. Everyone knows that even a plan is helpful.
Data Backup And recovery
As you might guess, Salesforce offers Data Recovery via its Recovery Service. It's an "added fee" service, but a good one. It's still advisable to have your in-house backup system since that will give you greater control and accessibility.
Through all of your preparations, keep in mind the following:
Likely the downtime will involve costs to you. Most providers, including Salesforce, have limited liability provisions. Depending on the nature and cause of the downtime, you may be on the hook for financial damage.
Your business operations will be affected. How badly and for how long depends on your preparations for the event.
Five Steps For Unplanned Salesforce downtime
Get A Communication Plan. Everybody impacted wants to stay informed about an incident and not run around like the proverbial chicken with its head cut off. The more information the various departments have about the outage, the smoother and easier their reaction will be.
Data Backup and Recovery Strategy. While Salesforce offers instant backup, Salesforce Data Recovery Services is a bit pricey and a little time-consuming to use. The smart players in any data-rich business sector know that on-site backup is also expensive. The Cloud offers backup, storage, and retrieval at a more affordable price.
Establish A Continuity Plan. Since your business depends on Salesforce and its associated systems, you must have a continuity plan so that when service is restored, it can pick up where they were before the outage. This might be easy to arrange, but covering peripheral damage is always a good idea, given that a significant point in using a third-party service is to avoid having to back yourself up.
Know The Risk. It's just a machine. Machines can fail without warning. Therefore regular maintenance is vital. There is always the chance of a total or partial data loss; permanently, as many backup systems and safeguards as you can manage are the way to go. Make a plan, rehearse the plan, and hope you never have to use it. Rehearsing the plan allows you to see if it can work and how the various teams respond to it.
Use A Support Center. Outside support entities can offer similar services in addition to the backup services from Salesforce.
Downtime Risks.
Risk exists in every endeavour, sometimes more risk, sometimes less. Your data loss could be huge in this case, but the risk is negligible when you take the proper precautions. Your Key to safety is your Salesforce consultant. They can steer you toward the perfect solution to lower your risk. Check with Rely Services and use the value of their 20+ years of experience.
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