Running a Small Business

Lesson 3: Organization and Planning

Planning for disaster

Occasionally, and usually through no fault of the business owners, the business suffers a devastating loss which threatens to result in its failure. Planning for such an event makes failure less likely and has several other benefits which improve how your business runs. This kind of planning is not for when your values are off track or you don't meet your projections - it is for when your values and projections lose importance because your whole business is threatened.

Typical events which fall in this category are natural disasters such as floods, accidents such as fire and criminal activity such as sabotage. If your business is a victim of any of these, you will need a plan which lets you recover and start up again with a minimum of delay.

The benefit of thinking about this kind of event is that it makes you strip your business down to the essential - what would you really need if your place of business were lost completely with all its contents? Your preparations should fall into four categories:

1. Software
   Every business today uses computers for some aspect of its work and these computers run on software. You will need an inventory of all software that you are running including the version and its supplier. Then decide which is essential. Make back-up copies of the original disks for every day use and store the original disks off site, possibly in a safety deposit box.
2. Hardware
   Your software will not be any good if it doesn't have anything to run on. Take an inventory of your computer equipment. Standard computers which will run standard software are no problem - you can buy new ones off the shelf to run the software you stored off site. But for special hardware like unusual printers, back-up devices which are not made anymore or special scanners you need a source or a replacement in stock off site.
3. Data and documents
   Make sure you have up-to-date back-ups of all data files on your computers. Do an inventory of your electronic data and make sure it is all being back-up. Make copies of key paper documents and, for good measure, scan them and keep a copy with your back-up data. One set of back-up disks should be put in a secure, off-site location.
4. People
   None of the above is any good if you can't get hold of your people. Make sure you have a record of the contact information of key employees in an off-site location. Make sure you or some of the key employees have the required keys, passwords, codes etc. to get at all the things which are stored off-site and which may now be required.

If you lose your place of business to a disaster, you'll always have lots of problems but with a minimum of planning as detailed above, you can have your key computer systems up and running again with a minimum delay. Then you can call your customers and suppliers and let them know what has happened. You can again send out invoices and receive mail. In short, you have a good shot at surviving the disaster. If you don't do this planning, would you?

Print this page

  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9