With the advent of the 2012 London Olympic Games many organisations are looking at Emergency Planning and this is a timely point to look at your own plans.
Emergency planning is the process of preparing in advance in case of a major unexpected event. This document is aimed at helping you plan for your own business in relation to your multichannel retail system.
It is worth noting that the Intelligent Retail smart-client architecture has a very strong track record in reliability.
- The fact that the Connect software and database files are held on the local computer as well as on a central server makes the system very robust.
- In addition to this we keep 2 weeks of daily backups at Rackspace and store a year’s worth of monthly archives in case of emergency.
- Since 2008, IR has invested heavily in IBM Rational Robot which now runs over 8 hours of computer speed testing before Connect updates are released (this would take months for a person to do manually), and results more robust software.
However no IT system is infallible, so this document is intended to help you plan for an emergency. Because of the nature of IR system, these emergencies would need two or more unlikely events occurring at the same time. Which makes it more improbable but not impossible. Here are a few examples of what if’s that may help you consider what you would do in the unlikely event that they occurred.
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What you can do to Reduce Risk
Here is a summary of preventative measures you can take to reduce the impact an emergency may have on your business. Whether you do them rather depends on your attitude to risk and impact to your business, the Scenarios that follow from page 2 should help you evaluate the risks in more detail.
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‘What if’ Emergency Scenario 1
A situation or emergency occurs that causes your access to the internet to be down for several days AND during this time one of your tills fails and trashes its hard disk.
The Risks:
- You will have a till unavailable until it is repaired.
- As the broadband had been down for a few days, the failed till would not have had the chance to upload information. This would mean some sales data would be lost.
What you Would do:
- Once your till is repaired or replaced, Connect can be installed on it remotely (after the internet is up and running). Your database will be put on the till but some of the data from that till would be missing.
What you can do to Manage the risk:
Till out of action
- Consider what you would use whilst your till is out of action. Some retailers keep a computer available as a replacement. This could be a Back Office that also has Till functionality.
- If you use integrated Chip & Pin, consider how you would take card payments. Some retailers make sure the replacement till computer is capable of working with the Chip & Pin system.
Lost data
- If you take a regular backup of each Back Office and Till Database (this can be a cloud based backup or a local backup), you would be able to reinstate most of the lost data onto the database. Our support team can set Connect to do a ‘Full Data Merge’ which takes all of the data on the system and pushes it up to the server. This does not guarantee all data will be restored but it does take advantage of any data that is on the system.
- See our helpsheet on Backing up Connect.
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‘What if’ Emergency Scenario 2
There is an emergency at Rackspace that causes the main server to fail AND backup servers to fail AND this destroys the data AND during this time one of your back office computers has a major failure and trashes its hard disk.
The Risks:
- You will have a Back Office system unavailable until the computer is repaired.
- In the time between the servers being down and IR getting them running again, any data that was changed on your Back Office before it failed would be lost.
- During the time the IR servers are down, no reports will run and data will not flow around your system. You will still be able to use Connect on the Tills and Back Offices though.
Actions:
- Get your Back Office computer repaired or replaced. Then contact IR support who will installed Connect remotely.
- IR will work on the servers and work from whatever data is still available in the system to restore as much as possible.
What you can do to Reduce the Risk:
Back Office out of action.
Consider what you would use whilst your Back Office is out of action. If the Back Office is important then it is wise to have another computer available to use as a temporary replacement, IR can install Connect onto this temporarily for a fee.
Lost data
- If you take a regular backup of each Back Office and Till Database (this can be a cloud based backup or a local backup), you would be able to reinstate most of the lost data onto the database. Our support team can set Connect to do a ‘Full Data Merge’ which takes all of the data on the system and pushes it up to the server, this does not guarantee all data will be restored but it does take advantage of any data that is on the system.
- See our helpsheet on Backing up Connect
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‘What if’ Emergency Scenario 3
An extremely unlikely event occurs that causes a conflict between some software you have installed on your system and Connect AND this is so serious it stops Connect from working at all AND this impacts on all of your Tills and Back Office systems.
The Risks:
- Your Back Office and Till computers would not operate until IR repairs the system.
- If extended damage is done around the system then data may be lost.
Actions:
- IR development team would try and remedy the situation by asking you to uninstall the software, or issue a new version of Connect. Either approach will take time.
- Once the system is repaired Support could reinstall Connect on your system.
What you can do to Reduce the Risk:
Till and Back Office out of action.
- If you take a regular, though less frequent backup of the whole Connect Folder from your Back Office and Tills (this can be a cloud based backup or a local backup), you should be able to reinstall this so that the older version of Connect gives you the ability to use your tills and take payments. This is a Temporary Emergency System. Only use this backup once you have called us.
- See our helpsheet on Backing up Connect.
Notes
- You must call our Support team before doing this and we will stop the system synchronising.
- Whilst in this Temporary Emergency mode there will be no records kept of sales made.
- You would need to wait until the servers are reinstated to run reports again.
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