Business Continuity Plans have become absolutely imperative in today’s business environment. Disasters strike when we least expect them causing downtime that can interrupt revenue briefly or completely devastate a business. With the advances in technology and creativity there are steps you can take to prepare for the worst, it’s known as business continuity planning. What do you need to know about business continuity planning? Here are some things to get you on the right track and 8 tips to keep your business from being one of the 25% of SMB’s (Small Medium Businesses) that never reopen after a disaster.

What is a business continuity plan? 

A business continuity plan is how you will keep your business functioning when there is an unplanned disruption to your business, services and / or revenue.  

Business continuity plans generally include strategies to resume productivity, data backup & recovery procedures, and redundancy options for communication services. This tells us that although a disaster recovery strategy is important for every business; it is only part of a quality business continuity plan. Remember, we are developing a much larger strategy to keep revenue flowing, records secure and accessible, and communications live during times of unexpected turbulence in your business. 

Why should you have a business continuity plan?

It is estimated that an SMB can lose up to $100,000 an hour when failure occurs in their infrastructure. Depending on how long your downtime continues, it may be impossible to recover. How much could it you’re your business every hour? Are you a manufacturer that cannot access product designs?  Or a printer that cannot communicate with your digital presses? A retailer that cannot run credit card transactions? These are just a few of the considerations businesses start with during plan development.  

A business continuity plan is the “insurance policy” a business needs to eliminate or minimize downtime when disaster hits. 

What does a business continuity plan need?

A good business continuity plan is defined by its components. There are 8 key factors that every comprehensive business continuity plan should have.  

Assign Key Contacts:

Initially you must have assign the key contact(s) to oversee the business continuity plan. Their contact information of the key contacts must be disseminated to your employees for use in the event of a business interruption or a disaster. Design a contingency plan with an alternate contact or contacts should the original designees be unreachable or incapacitated.

Establish Communication Guidelines:

Document how you will communicate with staff, clients, vendors and even authorities. Establish a secondary line of communications for vital messaging, if the systems go down. This is the first step in establishing redundancy in communications.  

Develop a Threat Analysis:

What threats can affect your business? Understanding the threats that can affect your business is imperative. In order to do this, know how each impacts your business, whether it’s simple like an employee error, digital intrusion, ransomware or a natural disaster. Rank your list of threats by factoring in:

• Likeliness they will occur
• The impact on business operations 

Through understanding the threats and their ramifications to your business you will know how to overcome them if they ever occur.

Suppliers and Merchant Contact:

Having a means of contacting suppliers, service providers, IT vendors and other important partners for your business is imperative for day to day operations as well as future growth and stability. Reduce your stressors caused by the unforeseen business interruptions or disasters by knowing how to contact these important entities. 

Develop Phases of Recovery:

The first stage is to understand your critical business operations and prioritizing what needs to be functional first. Following this, the subsequent phases should follow the most logical path, and mirror the priorities previously identified. By implementing recovery in stages you reduce the risk of missteps, errors, malfunctions and miscommunications. 

Implement Communication Redundancy:

Our network(s) are the backbone of our business’ revenue generating functions, sustainability and adaptability. Without our networks, communications and data access fail or become susceptible. Network failure can come in many forms but here we consider what happens when you no longer have access to the digital world, cloud backups, phone services, credit card transactions and so many crucial business functions.  Technology allows us to incorporate multiple internet service providers. This is fantastic as you can rely on two or more providers or a single one to provide different forms of redundancy, Spectrum is a great example. When one source goes down the alternate network automatically provides the service that has stopped. Our communication services serve as the strength of our business as it is critical for the function and revenue generation of almost all business.

Implement Power Outage Protections:

Generators, UPS backup systems and surge protections have likely been incorporated to your business already. If not strongly consider the benefits. What about internet access for mission critical devices? As a manufacturer, you may want the shipping computer(s) on line. In a restaurant you may need to make sure you can make credit card transactions or order from suppliers to keep your doors open. What if you could hardwire those devices and continue to drive revenue? If you have backup power, you should invest in Wireless Internet Backup for a nominal monthly charge that cn pay for itself annually with only one transaction.  

Defined Disaster planning: 

Natural disasters should be incorporated in every business continuity plan. Each type of natural disaster needs a specific plan. Please only develop plans for disasters that are likely to occur in the region you are in, Hurricanes in Florida, tornadoes in Kansas, blizzards in New York and so on.  

You will also want to plan for less daunting but sometimes equally destructive disasters such as a bathroom flooding your records room, electrical fire in the IT closet, hidden mold growth that makes your space uninhabitable, etc. 

Get started now!

A business continuity plan only works when it is thoroughly planned for and implementation procedures are well defined. It will be critical in the success of your business when something impedes or stops your business function. Including these 8 things in your business continuity plan, will reduce the impact of the unknown and protect your SMB from becoming another statistic.

Understand the importance of being prepared for an emergency and how various events can devastate your business. If you want to visit this topic in more detail, please reach out to me for ideas on how I can help you get started protecting the future of your business.

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