Disaster Recovery Planning

If the term Business Continuity Planning doesn’t immediately ring any bells for you, it’s the process of identifying potential threats to the continuing operations of your business. A business continuity plan allows you to successfully navigate through the threats if they become an unfortunate reality.

Global warming is making the threat of floods and wind damage more of an issue for many locations and the risk of fire is always present. However unlikely they might seem it is hard to get anyone to plan for because it seems so unlikely that something similar will ever happen to you.

There are articles on the web detailing how a local business recently had their internet line go down for several days. In their opinion, it almost put them out of business, and yet they had never before felt the need to invest in a secondary internet connection. They had never answered the question:

A small monthly investment in a backup line would have saved them countless hours of lost productivity and steered them clear of a potential disaster.

It’s possible that none of these questions apply to you, but every business has vulnerabilities that must be recognised.

Could your business survive? How much revenue would be lost? Would your customers stay with you through the hard times?

Most small business owners and managers are so busy keeping up with everyday issues of growth, employees, and customers that they don’t take the time to think about Business Continuity Planning. It must be done, however, and shouldn’t be put off.