Your collision center may have backups. But do you know what would happen if you actually needed them?

A collision center should test its technology recovery plan the same way a building tests its fire drill: before anything goes wrong.

A fire drill makes sure people know what to do when an emergency happens: who takes charge, what happens first, and where the plan falls apart. Run the same kind of test on your shop's IT.

The middle of an outage or a cyber incident is a bad time to find out a backup is incomplete, a password is missing, or nobody knows which system has to come back first.

Have You Ever Restored From Your Backups?

A backup is only useful when it can be restored quickly, completely and in the right order.

Most owners assume their important files are backed up somewhere. That may be true. Until somebody restores something, though, you're relying on a report that says the job finished.

Can you restore a deleted estimate or a customer file?

Can an employee get back to work on a damaged or replaced computer?

Is your Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace email protected somewhere other than the original cloud account? Microsoft keeps a departed employee's OneDrive for only a limited time, so we keep a separate backup.

If a server fails, how long before your staff can work again?

Those answers get harder to find when the phones are ringing, customers want updates, and the cars have stopped moving through the shop. For our managed clients, we check every backup every day and test-restore files every month, so those questions already have answers.

What an IT Outage Looks Like Inside a Collision Center

An IT outage at a collision center reaches the estimators, the front office, the managers and the shop floor all at once.

Picture 8:30 on a Monday morning. Estimators can't open photos, estimates, supplements or the insurance portals. The front office can't pull up customer information or send repair updates. Managers lose sight of scheduling, production and parts. The phones may be down, and email has stalled.

Employees start calling whichever vendor they think owns the problem, and each one says it belongs to someone else. Meanwhile, you're the escalation point.

That's what an untested recovery plan costs: confusion and downtime while nobody knows what happens next.

Which Systems Need to Come Back First?

The first systems to restore are the ones that let everyone else work: internet and network access, then accounts and email, then estimating and shop management.

Your list will be different, but for many shops it looks something like this:

  • Internet, firewall and secure network access
  • Employee accounts, email and shared files
  • Estimating and shop management systems
  • Insurance portals and vendor communication
  • Phones and customer communication tools
  • Accounting, payroll and administrative systems
  • Security cameras and supporting technology

The right order depends on your shops, your systems and your vendors. A single-location shop may get by with one list. A growing operator with several locations usually needs a list for each shop plus one for the shared systems. Settle the order now, before anything breaks.

What a Real Recovery Drill Should Test

A recovery drill can start with a few controlled tests, and none of them requires shutting down the business.

Restore a deleted file and make sure it opens. Recover a mailbox or a cloud folder. See how fast a replacement computer can be set up for an estimator or a manager.

If I could only pick one test, I'd start with restoring a file. It takes a few minutes, and it tells you whether the backup is real.

Confirm that the person who runs the backups can reach the recovery system without using an account that might have been compromised, and write down vendor contacts, account details, credentials and who to escalate to.

Then time the whole thing instead of guessing.

After that, walk through a few realistic scenarios:

  • A server fails on Monday morning.
  • An employee account is compromised.
  • Ransomware locks several computers.
  • Someone deletes a shared folder on the way out the door.

For each one, decide who notices the problem, who makes the first call, which systems still work, how people talk to each other, and who keeps you updated. A good drill shows you the unclear steps while you're still in control of the situation.

Give the ransomware scenario extra time, because many strains go after the backups too. CISA warns that many ransomware variants find and delete or encrypt accessible backups. One customer we'd set up with backups was hit by ransomware, and when we tried to sign in to the backup service, the account was shut off. The person who used to pay the bills had left, the backup company hadn't been paid in a while, and the backups had been turned off. They lost about five years of files. If it happens to you, read what to do if your collision center is hit by ransomware.

Who Does What During a Recovery

A recovery plan has to cover communication, decisions, security and business continuity as well as the restore itself.

Your employees need to know where to report something suspicious and who can make decisions. Managers need a way to reach each other when email and phones are down, and you need clear updates on what's affected, what still works and what happens next.

If a cyberattack is involved, the team may also need to preserve evidence, reset accounts, call the insurance carrier, contact legal counsel or notify affected vendors.

You shouldn't have to run every step yourself. You need a clear process, and an accountable partner who already knows it.

Multi-Location Shops Have More to Coordinate

A multi-location collision center needs a recovery plan for each shop plus one for the systems the shops share.

The setup that worked with one shop gets harder to keep consistent as you grow. You add people, devices, internet connections and vendors, and every addition is another chance for something to be configured differently.

One location has solid backups and another doesn't. Important files live on one employee's computer instead of in a protected shared system. One person knows the vendor logins. Nobody has the full picture of how the locations connect.

The first thing I look for at a shop with more than one location is whether every one of them is backed up the same way.

That isn't anyone's fault. The shop grew faster than the IT process, which is a good problem to have. It's also the point where informal support starts leaving too much on your shoulders.

Don't Let Each Vendor Run Its Own Recovery

During an outage, each vendor looks at its own piece, so someone has to own the complete recovery.

The internet company checks the circuit. The software provider checks the application. The phone vendor checks the phones. The computer technician checks the workstation. Each one does its job, and nobody is looking at how all the parts fit together.

Growing collision centers need one accountable technology partner who understands the full operation, sets priorities, communicates with vendors, and keeps the process moving. You get clear updates without managing every call. We believe you shouldn't have to manage your IT provider just to keep your business running smoothly.

Just a thought: ask your vendors who calls whom during an outage before you need the answer.

Test the Plan Before Your Shops Need It

Run the recovery test while nothing is broken, so the gaps show up during a test instead of an outage.

Nobody schedules a fire drill because they expect a fire tomorrow morning. A controlled recovery test turns up missing files, incomplete backups, outdated documentation, passwords nobody has, recovery times that aren't realistic, and systems that were never protected.

Finding any of those during a test is an inconvenience. Finding it during a real outage can stop the shop.

We know how frustrating it is to run a shop when IT problems keep interrupting your team and demanding your attention. We've been supporting businesses since 2014, with more than 30 years of technology experience behind us, and we work with collision centers in Morris County, Northern New Jersey and throughout New Jersey.

We start by looking at your locations, employees, estimating platforms, insurance communication, cloud accounts, computers, vendors, phones and internet. Then we work out with you what needs to be protected, what has to come back first, how your people should respond, and who owns the recovery when something goes wrong. After that, we keep testing it, so you know it's handled.

Schedule your free 20-minute Collision IT Risk Review and see what better IT support could look like for your shop.

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