Line of Business
Small Canadian firm stays on track with data recovery
Each year Ontrack Data Recovery -- a five-employee Canadian data recovery outfit -- successfully recovers valuable, even critical, data for anywhere between 1,500 to 2,000 customers across the country. What's behind this small firm's big time success? Read on. INCLUDES VIDEO.8/3/2010 5:00:00 AM By: Joaquim P. Menezes
In terms of staff count, Ontrack Data Recovery is a small outfit, no question about it.
And yet, this five-employee shop -- essentially the entire Canadian operations of Kroll Ontrack Inc. a global data recovery firm headquartered in Minneapolis -- has achieved success far greater than its size would warrant.
Each year it recovers valuable, even critical, data for anywhere between 1,500 to 2,000 customers across the country -- a track record it has sustained since it opened its doors in Toronto five years ago. (Prior to that, Canadian customers were serviced from Kroll Ontrack's U.S. offices for around 20 years).
VIDEO - Staying OnTrack with Data Recovery
Ontrack Data Recovery's customers include small and mid-sized businesses as well as consumers, and recovered items run the gamut – all the way from computer hard drives, and thumb drives to MicroSD flash cards, and multi-disc arrays – any device capable of holding data, in fact.
RELATED ARTICLES
Data recovery firm suggests using courier to ship damaged drives
Four ways SMBs can prevent data loss without breaking the bank
So what's behind this small outfit's impressive accomplishments? How does the five-member team handle the varied data recovery needs of so many customers? (The firm's staff consists of an office manager, a couple of cleanroom engineers, an engineering service technician, and a person dedicated to building the business and partnership accounts).
The employees cite five success drivers: the right skills and expertise, a streamlined workflow, the ability to draw on the tools and resources of Kroll Ontrack's worldwide office network, and a total commitment to customer service.
The last factor, they say, includes a commitment to getting the job done, regardless of the difficulties and time involved (working on weekends and through the night is not unusual) and meaningful interaction with customers before, during, and after the data recovery process.
“Choice” is a key element of this interaction, John Riddell, operations manager at Ontrack Data Recovery told ITBusiness.ca. Where possible, he said, this extends to the recovery method.
“When a customer contacts our Call Centre, we go through a series of questions to determine the nature of the problem, and the most appropriate strategy.” A couple of these don't even require the product to be brought in or shipped to the Ontrack lab.
For instance, using a proprietary remote data recovery application -- with the customer's permission -- the Ontrack technician may access their home computer (if it's still functional).
“We would then run our diagnostics tools on their machine, and see if we can recover it remotely,” Riddell said. “If we succeed, we back the data on to media sitting at home with them.”
He emphasized that such remote recovery can only be done with the customer's express permission and participation.
“We make a utility available to them off our Web site. They need to download that on to a functional drive for us to be able to dial in and take control. So we have no way of getting into their machine until they allow us.”
Another option, he said, it to enable the customer to recover the data themselves.
Page Navigation 1) Five pillars of success. - Page 12) Recovery could take anywhere from 10 minutes to a few days. - Page 2
3) Streamlined workflow eliminates delays. - Page 3
<< Back
