There are lots of reasons for a company to make the transition to Business VoIP, but one that cannot be overestimated is its importance as part of a business continuity plan. From earthquakes and floods to the ongoing stream of hurricanes, disasters are an unfortunate part of business life. It’s easy to dismiss them as rare or not worth bothering about, but it only takes one of those rare events to completely destroy an unprepared business. Fortunately, there are ways to survive the worst of nature and maintain business continuity without seeing profits go down the drain.

So what is business continuity? To put it simply, it is just the ability of a company to continue operating in the event of a disaster. The term is associated with disaster recovery, but usually indicates a broader strategy. Now, arguably the most important parts of a business are the communication and power lines. Without these, nothing gets done. Unfortunately, these lines are at great risk from fierce winds or being knocked down. When they go down, a business is cut off from its customers and even its own employees. Without phone or Internet contact, businesses rapidly lose sales and productivity drops to almost nothing. A prolonged outage can spell the end for smaller businesses that have no way of recovering from a significant downtime.

Business VoIP forms part of a business continuity plan through its ability to keep the lines of communication open. This is a business’ first priority in a disaster scenario. In an emergency, being able to coordinate employees and keep in touch with customers is a must. Even after the initial danger has passed, the ability to keeping operating as close to normal as possible will help a business survive.

How does VoIP do this? Since it runs your communications through a data network, there are multiple routes for signals to take in case one or more fails. While traditional systems rely on physical equipment that can be easily damaged or disconnected, VoIP uses the cloud, redundant connections, and hardware to keep service up and running. With a hosted system, the crucial data and hardware is stored at a remote data center managed by a provider, which is far enough away that it is not caught in the same disaster.

Without a business continuity plan, a company is at risk of having everything it has accomplished undone by a sudden disaster. There’s no need to risk losing everything, not when Business VoIP provides an affordable and simple way to weather any storm.