Contingency Plan ideas

There are two contingencies that you can plan for:
1. Hardware failures, power failure, natural disaster, etc. due to natural disaster, etc. That can be mitigated by database replication, offsite recovery facilities, etc. and should be part of any enterprise IT DR plan.

2. Software failure (i.e. bad patch installed, corrupt database, etc.). Here the only solution is to rollback to know good state and start over. For Lawson DBMS's I have seen some clients do a backup just prior to running payroll, etc. in case of need to recover.

As for non-systemic recovery options, ones I've seen include:

1. Encouraging 100% Direct Deposit and in event of complete meltdown, have bank issue "same as last time" payments to the employees.

2. Manual preparation of checks based on previous payroll.

3. Wads of cash (don't laugh--I've seen it!) in a true disaster (i.e. think Katrina) can get people enough to keep them from bolting, and buy you enough time to recover and return to normal.

That's my input...I'd love to hear thoughts from others...