As the annual World Backup Day approaches yet again, we highly recommend that everyone take and share the World Backup Day pledge, with some important Salesforce data-related additions:
“I solemnly swear to backup my important Salesforce data, metadata, documents and precious memories on March 31st and beyond. I will also strive to test my Salesforce data recovery strategy regularly and completely.”
Are you prepared to launch your Salesforce backup and recovery strategy (if you haven’t already) on March 31, 2019 for World Backup Day? Here are 10 reasons your company needs to have a Salesforce backup and recovery strategy and mitigate your risk of Salesforce user-inflicted data loss and corruption.
Reason 1: YOU Are Responsible For The Data Loss and Corruption YOU Create
For their own uptime and availability, as well as Disaster Recovery purposes, Salesforce replicates clients’ production environment and stores it on backup tapes for 90 days. If you discover the data loss within three months, Salesforce Data Recovery services can look for your data in the tape backups based on parameters that you give them and send you your data in .CSV format for a cost of $10,000 and a six to eight week waiting period. Salesforce says their “Data Recovery is a last resort process.”
After receiving your .CSV backup files, you would have to manually complete the recovery process. This could take a few days to a couple of weeks, depending on how much data was deleted and how complex the relationships are in your data. Or, if you prefer, Salesforce will recommend an external professional services firm to do this manual recovery work for you.
Reason 2: User-Inflicted Data Loss and Corruption Happens, Even on Salesforce
In our 2018 State of Salesforce Data Protection survey results, OwnBackup uncovered that 28 percent of Salesforce users have experienced a Salesforce data loss or corruption. Data corruption can be particularly challenging because it often remains hidden for days, weeks, months, or even permanently, making data recovery extremely difficult. The typical data loss and corruption offenders include human error, integration errors, buggy code, and malicious intent.
Reason 3: Data Loss and Corruption Are Costly to Your Business
The cost of a data loss or corruption is dependent not only on the value of your data, but also on the impact of the entire company. Increased labor costs, data recovery fees, reputational damage, revenue impact, compliance fines, and a loss in productivity, all contribute to the cost of data loss and corruption.
Reason 4: Business Continuity Relies on Salesforce Backup and Recovery
According to IMPACT Technology Group, 40 percent of businesses cease operations within one year of a critical IT failure. Whenever your data is unavailable to your employees, integrations, or applications, numerous departments of your business can grind to a halt, which could cause you to lose customers, revenue, and more. Your organization needs to be able to recover as quickly as possible to maintain business continuity.
Reason 5: Testing Your Data Recovery Strategy Is Critical
The experts at OwnBackup recommend clients test their data recovery strategy regularly to find out how long it will actually take to restore impacted data.
Reason 6: Save Money and Resources for Other Initiatives
Budgetary limitations are often a barrier for many IT departments. If you are not prepared, the cost of a data loss could cause unplanned expenses that may exceed your allocated budget. The IT departmental costs directly associated with Salesforce data recovery include data recovery fees, labor costs, and possibly consultant fees.
Reason 7: Improve Worker Productivity Across the Company
A user-inflicted data loss or corruption doesn’t just impact the IT team. It could have massive repercussions on the entire company's day-to-day departmental operations. This could include sales, marketing, customer service, finance, and the C-suite. With that many workers at stake, you’ll want to recover the data as soon as possible.
Reason 8: Remain Compliant with Regulations
Comprehensive backup and recovery are key compliance requirements of many governmental and industry regulations, including GDPR, HIPAA, and SEC 17a-4. Non-compliance with these regulations can lead to serious consequences, including fees, notification costs, reputational damage, and lost business.
Reason 9: Minimize Risk During Data Migrations
Due to the complexity of Salesforce data migrations, you may be at a high risk of accidentally losing critical data or documents. Imagine what would happen, for example, if you lost thousands of critical customer contracts. That could be a legal nightmare. To prevent a major stall to business operations during a Salesforce migration, set up a data protection foundation that includes backup, monitor, and recovery of all of your data, metadata, and documents.
Reason 10: Accelerate Digital Transformation
A comprehensive backup and recovery strategy adds value to your digital transformation initiatives by eliminating the administrative burden and excess expense of managing your company’s data recovery process. This allows you to innovate with confidence on the Salesforce platform with peace of mind that your data is safe and sound.
We hope this post has helped you understand the importance of backing up and being able to completely recover your Salesforce data every day, not just on World Backup Day.
Learn more about your Salesforce data loss and corruption risk by taking the OwnBackup User-Inflicted Data Loss Risk Assessment today.
