Many businesses do not realise the value of their data until it is too late. Others think that they have good backups, only to find them unreliable when needed.
	(Information security breaches survey 2004 - DTI)

Manuscripts and data are extremely valuable. So are an author’s time and the ability of agents, publishers and booksellers to continue to providetheir services. Lose continuity and you can quickly miss important deadlines and lose clients, customers and revenue.

• On average, by the 6th day of a major data loss, companies experience 25% loss in daily revenue. By day 25, this has risen to 40%.
  
  
• 43% of companies that experience a severe data loss and have no effective recovery plans in place, never re-open.
  
  
• 61% of companies took more than a day to recover from their worst systems failure. (Information security breaches survey 2004 - DTI)

A study by the University of Texas found that "only 6% of companies suffering from a catastrophic data loss survive, while 43% never reopen and 51% close within 2 years"

Dataloss is expensive and costs UK business billions of pounds in lost revenue every year. Computer hard drives now hold more information in smaller spaces which amplifies the impact of a failure. In addition, the variety of file types that hold critical business information necessitates a backup system which is simple, automatic, fast and efficient. It should be capable of collecting and storing data from a range of file types. You should consider:

	Company accounts, spreadsheets, P&L accounts and sales forecasts
	Corporate, recruitment, sales training and marketing presentations
	Manuscripts, cover and advertising copy, contracts, rights data, sales data, royalty records, business plans, correspondence, HR data
	Client databases, CRM and sales contact management systems
	Pictures, videos, projects and media files both business and personal

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	Do all businesses do regular backups?
	Unfortunately not. Many have a backup routine but it is rarely satisfactory and, when really put to the test, they often came up short. 99% of all businesses DO NOT maintain a daily backup. It is not until they come to restore the information and then have to replace or recreate the last weeks worth of data, that they often wish they had done.
	Ask yourself...If you backed up intermittently, how much time would it take you to recover the information since your last successful backup and bring your records back up to date?