Are You Ready for Disaster
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12 Dec 2012
Business Continuity
What would happen to your
business if a digger went through your telephone connection, your
premises were damaged by fire, or your warehouse manager was injured in
a car crash? You may give some off-pat answers to those questions and
some or all of them may actually work if the worst happened, but all
too often when the chips were down you find that many of the emergency
solutions thrown together when problems occur don’t actually work well
enough to save your business from substantial disruption or even
eventual closure!
Business Continuity Planning or Disaster Planning is
the process of developing, testing, training and reviewing plans which
help a business to keep functioning in the event of a problem
disrupting access to normal systems, processes, staff or premises.
All too often business continuity plans are poorly developed,
often focusing almost exclusively on IT systems, are not tested, not
disseminated and trained, or are left unreviewed and unrevised for many
years.
To start the process have a brainstorming session with staff
to think about all the things which could go wrong, possible
alternative scenarios and potential problems with those also. For
instance if a digger goes through your telephone cables people will
often say “we’ll use mobiles”. Well how good is the signal? What is the
cell capacity? How do customers ring in? Do your staff mind using their
mobiles? What about your broadband connection?
The list of possible disasters and their consequences will
vary from business to business but some generic areas are:
- loss of key staff members – including the managers/owners
- loss of access to key premises
- loss of access to key processes, systems and documentation
- loss of access to business materials (eg stock)
For each area which you have identified and discussed in your
brainstorming session you should develop a workable solution. Depending
upon your business and the scenarios you have come up with you will
have to make a decision on how big the likelihood of
a particular event occurring is and the cost of preparing an
alternative. Remember though that the future of your business is on the
line so don’t discount everything on grounds of cost.
Having developed your plan and put it into place test that it
works. You don’t need to dig up that phone cable, but you could pick a
quieter time or a weekend to turn off the phone and see if your
alternative plan works. I can tell you from personal experience that
these tests will highlight areas where things don’t quite work
how you thought they would and adjustments will need to be
made.
Once everything has been tested properly make sure all your
staff know of the existence of the plan, are trained in the bits they
need to be part of, and that everyone has access to the full plan
documentation in normal times AND when a disaster is occurring. That
may involve printed copies or a separately hosted disaster intranet for
use from mobiles, or some other method.
Once that’s done it’s tempting to tick the box and move on.
Don’t. Review, test and retrain the plan at regular intervals. Remember
to update it when procedures or key staff change.
Lastly a word about responsibilities. Make one senior manager
responsible for putting the plan into action if needed, but make sure
they have two fully responsible deputies. Remember any one of these may
be a victim of the disaster. The first and most critical part of your
Continuity Plan is to make sure everyone in the company and key
customers and suppliers know what’s going on. Develop a communication
cascade enabling lots of people to be kept up to date quickly.
Business Continuity Planning is one of those areas which small
businesses will often ignore because they lack the time, staff or money
to put plans into effect. Ironically it’s smaller businesses which are
most likely to be affected by typical disruptions. Please don’t delay,
make a start today, however small it may be. Get outside help if
needed. Tomorrow may be too late. Good Luck!
About the Author
John Norton, is a senior business and
finance professional with a big four, blue chip, software and
technology background, and board level leadership experience in
finance, IT, operations, customer service and general management.
He is owner of No Worry Web, which creates and manages small
business web sites and social media presence, for an all-inclusive
monthly fee. For further details see www.noworryweb.co.uk
or call 0845 5191 275.
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Article Published/Sorted/Amended on Scopulus 2013-07-05 09:10:19 in Business Articles
