BUSINESS CONTINUITY PLANNING

Helping you to set up a smart plan to deal with disaster

What is business continuity planning?

This is anticipating the crises that could affect your business and planning for them, to make sure that the business can continue to function in the event of an emergency.

A disaster recovery plans focuses on IT recovery of your business such as tape backup systems and other storage systems. However a business continuity plan will address the entire requirements essential to keep your business running and keep disruptions to customers and employees to a minimum; it is managing the crisis before it escalates into a disaster.

Why? A Business Continuity Plan will not only increase the likelihood of your survival following a crisis, but will also help ensure the safety and protection of your biggest asset, your people.

Step one: Basic emergency procedures:

· Make certain your employees understand the evacuation procedures

· Make sure your employees really know what to do if a fire breaks out

· Ensure your employees know what to do if a colleague is injured

· The key to a sound emergency procedure is clear process, roles and responsibility and employee awareness and training. There must be no doubt as to what must be done

Step two: Define your disasters and assess your risks

Common small business disasters include:

· Fire/flooding

· Computer/telephone failure

· Key equipment failure

· People issues such as illness/resignations/maternity leave

· Denial of access to premises

· Product defects

· Bomb/terrorism threat

· Legal/regulatory action

· Utilities failure

Step three: Secure your business, bit by bit:

Assess what disasters could threaten your business and then develop contingency plans and policies. Here are some scenarios to think about

Premises and key equipment – in case of being denied use of premise or key equipment -

· Would you be able to inform your employees and customers of disruption to the business?

· What would happen to customer orders due during the time that your premises were closed?

· Would you be able to make alternative arrangements for regular orders, to keep loyal customers happy?

People – how would your business cope –

· If three members of your team when to work for your major competitor, how would your business survive?

· If several key female employees went on maternity leave around the same time, who would cover for them?

· When was the last time you reviewed health and safety procedures in your work place?

Other thoughts to think about involving people:

· Key people – be sure to identify who they are and what they do and work hard to reward, challenge and protect them

· Skill sharing – if only one person knows how to do a job and that person becomes unavailable there is a huge problem. Ensure at least other people know enough about the job that they could cover on a temporary basis.

· Keep an eye of local competition – if they are hiring, make sure your employees are happy

· Assess workplace risk – provide safety measures to protect workers

IT/Telephone – your business most likely relies on internet and telephone to help run business functions

· Would your business still function if your computer or telephone system were unavailable for three days?

· Would you be able to contact your customers

· Would it hold up production?

· What alternative arrangements would you be able to make and how long would it take?

· What could you do to make certain you have access to vital data, even if your computer system is destroyed?

· If your computer systems are stolen could sensitive information fall into the wrong hands?

· What would happen if your competitor got hold of sensitive information?

· Are your computer systems robust?

The environment and weather – how well would you cope with fire or flooding?

· Suppose a fire or flood occurs, how would you keep customers happy and pay your employees while you are recovering?

· How patient would your creditors be if you were out of commission for several months?

Step four: Writing your own Business Continuity Plan

After considering many of the above variables you will want to begin to set up your own policies and procedures unique to your business, to ensure you have a plan in place to deal with disaster.

Arend, Laukhuf & Stoller, Inc. has a Disaster Preparedness and Response Checklist which will give you some ideas of what to do before and after a disaster strikes. This is a good start but each business is unique and so further plans may be necessary to meet the needs of your business.

Step five: Test the plan

Be sure to test your plan to make sure it works. For example, if you are running backups of your business data from your business computers, be sure to test the backups and make certain the data is on the backup and it can be restored in usable form.

Step six: Regularly update the plan

The only thing constant in life is the assurance of change. As the world changes so will your business. Be sure to identify when and how you might need to change your business continuity plan depending on the changes occurring to your business.