Resilience & recovery · Guidance
A Data Recovery Plan template anyone can use
During a DR3 workshop I noticed many customers had no written recovery plan for their SaaS platforms. So I wrote the template they were asking for.
- My role
- Principal Technical Account Manager
- Organisation
- Own from Salesforce
- When
- September – December 2024
- Result
- Now a core part of DR3 workshops
What was going on
A US credit union I was working with had disaster recovery and incident policies, but nothing that dealt with the specifics of SaaS platforms like Salesforce. They knew they needed a Data Recovery Plan and didn’t know how to write one. They had looked for a template and couldn’t find one that fitted modern SaaS.
Their request was simple: give us a template and guidance that follows best practice and that non-technical people can use.
What I set out to do
Create a scalable template and guidance that organisations could use to design, run and maintain their own recovery strategy.
- Follow the DR3 approach, with governance and compliance built in
- Work for non-technical readers without losing technical rigour
- Build in a cadence for testing and continuous improvement
- Help organisations respond properly to data loss or corruption
What I did
I started with the credit union’s existing policies and found where they fell short for SaaS. Then I built a template covering six areas.
- Overview: ownership, review cadence and objectives
- Risk assessment: key datasets, with RPOs and RTOs defined
- Backup and archiving: systems and data retention
- Incident response: playbooks for detection and recovery
- Governance: communication plans, compliance and training
- Continuous improvement: feedback loops for better readiness
What changed
I refined the guidance with colleagues so business users could follow it, then enabled TAMs to use it in customer workshops around the world.
The proof
The credit union produced its plan within days and ran its first recovery exercise, which highlighted areas to improve. The resource, “Create your own Data Recovery Plan for Salesforce”, is now a core part of DR3 workshops and has helped many more customers.
Doing it responsibly
I wrote it for people who aren’t technical, because a plan only an engineer can read protects nobody. The emphasis on regular testing and review helps organisations keep data safe as regulation evolves.