Over the past several weeks, we’ve witnessed disasters all over the United States, but particularly in the South and Mid-west. While many homes are completely destroyed and countless communities are directly affected, many small businesses suffered catastrophically.According to the Small Business Administration, on average, eight out of ten of these small business will close their doors forever as a result.
To put it another way; 80% of all small businesses affected by a disaster will go out of business. That’s a shocking number considering that small businesses make up 90% of the US economy.
Incidentally, the most common reason these businesses don’t recover is because they didn’t have a disaster recovery plan in place at the time the disaster occurred. Considering that disasters can happen at anytime, anywhere and without warning, having a Disaster Preparedness Plan for businesses is just is important as having a business plan when starting a business.
Developing an actionable Disaster Preparedness Plan requires that a framework be created to which the plan will be developed. Having this framework in place before will help guide in developing a plan that covers the entire business, from the people who help run it to maintaining the customers who rely on it.
1) Products and Services Catalog
Business owners will benefit greatly if they document all of their products and services in their entirety. This means documenting what each product and service is, who in the company provides it and the elements like IT services, data and office space that goes into supporting each one. This will be the road map for developing your disaster recovery plan. for your business.
2) Disaster Preparedness Planning
Perhaps the biggest misunderstanding about disaster preparedness is that planning recovery is only planning for the recovery of IT systems and data. While IT systems and data are a key part of a successful recovery, these are not the only key components to recovering a business after a disaster has occurred.
Developing a recovery plan around a business’s products and services catalog ensures the total recovery of that business. Your plan should include each product and service, the support elements, who is responsible for returning each one to operation and when and in what order each one must be put back into service.
3) Testing
In the Continuity business a plan is not a plan unless it has been tested. Be sure to exercise the Disaster Preparedness Plan and make any adjustments or changes based on the results before it is put it into service. After that, it should be tested it at least annually or when changes or updates to it, like adding or removing a new product or service or changing or adding staff.
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