It’s pretty common for those setting up their own businesses for the first time to become somewhat distracted by the excitement and indeed the challenges of the immediate moment. Suffice to say, disaster recovery doesn’t tend to be one of the most pressing concerns among most small business owners in general – actually getting by today, tomorrow, and the day after takes precedence.
Nevertheless, it’s impossible to know what’s around the next corner and with so many potential threats lurking in the shadows, it is in fact of crucial importance to plan for all contingencies. From catastrophic data loss to theft to floods to fires to earthquakes and so on, it takes nothing more than an unexpected and freak event to turn the average small business well and truly on its head.
The good news, however, is that all small business owners should find it relatively simple to set in place a workable recovery plan. It’s always a far better approach than leaving yourself vulnerable, so our experts at PKF Francis Clark have provided a quick look at a few of the most important tips for making it happen:
1. Risk-Assessment
First of all, you’ll need to think carefully about exactly what kinds of potential disasters and scenarios there are that theoretically could pose a threat to your business. You need to isolate which threats apply to you, how likely or unlikely any of them are to happen and how exactly/to what extent they would impact your business. It is only once you have mapped out all potential threats that you can realistically go about workable recovery planning.
2. Prioritise Operations
Next up, it’s a case of thinking about which business functions and operations should take priority in terms of restoration should you and your business face a disaster. There will always be certain jobs and duties that can be put on the back-burner for a while at least – others by contrast really cannot afford to be disrupted. It is while prioritising key operations that you will need to think about how and where you will be able to continue them in the event of an emergency.
3. Mitigation and Prevention
When priorities and key threats have been isolated, it’s then a case of thinking about how you can prevent and/or deal with each. For example, if the worst thing that could happen to your business is catastrophic data loss, the answer is working with an IT consultant for creating comprehensive backups in a safe location on a regular basis. If on the other hand you rely exclusively on your electricity supply, you need to think about how you would get the power up and running again if the primary supply was to fail.
4. Test and Revise
Last, but not least, a recovery plan that goes untested often turns out to be as much use as having no recovery plan in place at all. The reason being that you have no real way of knowing whether or not any element of it will prove to be workable when put to use, which is precisely why it must be tested, as well as analysed and revised on a periodic basis.
Now over to you
Does your company has a disaster recovery and/or business continuity plan in place? Please share with us how your plans impact your business’ overall performance.