Many small businesses are only just beginning to consider Business Continuity Planning, perhaps more imaginable risks like the recent severe weather will get SMEs moving faster on this. Larger companies now have sophisticated plans in place, the agility of small companies should allow a rapid catch up; agility is a major tactical advantage of small business as well as being a valuable asset in BCM.
I won't begin to outline a "one size fits all" disaster recovery plan, but instead here are five, quick to implement, top tips for small businesses to prepare for the smaller (but more likely) emergencies:
Know how to divert phones to somebody's home
If you have a VoIP phone system, chances are you can have an IP handset set up at home quite easily and cheaply or have a softphone installed on a PC or laptop, make sure you know how to add it to the "hunt group" so it rings with incoming calls on your main line when you need it to. Even with an analogue BT line you can order BT's divert service so diversions to a different number can be set up almost instantly.
Plan to run Accounts systems from a laptop
The accounts system is often the source of important contact information for customers and suppliers. The data files are typically held on a server but a separate online backup which can quickly be restored to a laptop with the accounts software on, provides quick easy business continuity for lots of possible scenarios. Even sophisticated SQL finance systems can often be run from a typical laptop.
Outlook on your laptop
If you run an Exchange Server, consider having Outlook data "cached" to your laptop so that your calendar (and mail, contacts, etc.) are available, even if a connection to your server isn't.
Keeping good communication with our clients helped to keep things going better than anything over the last few days - I found all our clients and partners were very upbeat and accommodating of changes to meetings and appointments.
Staff contact details
Having a Google Spreadsheet with staff contact details on means information can be accessed anywhere by anyone with proper permissions - staff could even keep this up to date themselves. Again this provides an accessible resource that doesn't rely on the standard infrastructure.
Free training
Consider participating in a Project Argus event, these are free simulations run by the National Counter Terrorism Security Office - while geared to disaster recovery from a terrorist attack, there are great lessons for BCM generally.
Other resources
Hertfordshire council produce an easy “10 minute assessment” that give some good pointers, you can download the pdf here.
Comments