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An impressive title, one that perhaps you think only applies to big businesses. Well, I suggest it is something that you should seriously think about, and, as a priority!  The recent riots in London and other cities around the country resulted in numerous businesses being adversely affected, some very significantly, others permanently!

Rather than “Disaster Recovery Planning” think about it as “What would I do if....?”

Thinking about the conceivable scenarios that could affect your business and its ability to operate could actually make the difference between the company surviving a situation or not.

It may help to break things down into a number of areas. Here are some examples: .....

Physical Environment:

This very much depends upon the type of business you operate, and the particular building from which you trade. A shop may have electric security shutters, which one day simply decide not to operate, thus making it impossible to open the store. A unit on a business park may be inaccessible for 24 hours due to a fire in an adjacent property, or a spillage on the estate road. The worse case scenario could be the total loss of the building by fire or flood. I am sure that everyone (almost!) has adequate insurance cover in place but policies rarely cover the long term loss of trade which can result.

Services:

Loss of electricity supply, telephone service, broadband etc. can all swiftly affect the operation of a business. Blocked drains can make toilet facilities unavailable, this may be ok in the short term but things could get uncomfortable quite quickly!

Staff:

A key member of staff may be taken ill (or worse) leading to the loss of skills which again can restrict operations.

IT and Mobile Phones:

What backup facilities do you employ, do your desk-tops and lap-tops backup onto your server if so great. However where is the server backed up... onto tapes, DVD’s or via the ‘Cloud’ off site?

Have you backed up your mobile phone recently, all those contacts you have diligently entered after all those networking events could very easily be lost.

In most cases, some time spent planning what to do if something should happen can make a huge difference.  Should a serious incident occur, a certain amount of panic sets in with both staff and the management who see their livelihood under threat.  Having a plan which the staff are aware off, and can understand, can immediately reduce stress levels enabling them to concentrate on the recovery process, i.e. something constructive.

By way of an example, we have a VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) Phone system, if we lose broadband connectivity we lose our phone system.  Our recovery plan is to use Blackberry / iPhone’s to access the internet and our VOIP Portal to divert all incoming calls to mobiles. We also access social media platforms Twitter / Facebook and Linkedin and manage client expectations, keeping them informed.  It doesn’t happen very often but when it does we are prepared.

The difficulty with planning for the unexpected is how far do you go?  A number of years ago when working on disaster recovery plans for a very large company, I was given some very good advice. No matter how hard you try to cover every eventuality, it will always be the one you didn’t think of that catches you out!

The best approach is to cover the most likely general scenarios, i.e. ‘Can’t access the building’ rather than all the possible reasons why not. Think of the consequences of the problem and how it could affect you, your staff, and the business. Then you can plan accordingly.

You have, in many cases spent years developing a client / customer base, they can be lost forever in a matter of hours if you do not have plans in place to mitigate the effects of a problem. When you have lost a client it can be very difficult to retrieve them. Many businesses never recover from fairly minor situations because they had not planned effectively, and were unable to react quickly enough.

If you would like to discuss your particular business in more detail call or email Grahame Johnson on (01635) 884270 grahame.johnson@opusaccounting.co.uk

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