The subject of organisational resilience and business continuity is not my area of expertise but through my executive coaching clients and colleagues I have learned some of the jargon and theory behind it. You may have heard of business continuity experts – they are people who advise businesses on anything from disaster recovery and insurance to identifying business outputs and risks to them, and how to keep revenue flowing if there is a disaster or crisis. A business continuity plan sets out how your business could recover from a disaster or a major disruption to its operations. Lately I have been thinking that I should have my own business continuity plan – one that consists of more than just backing up my hard drive from time to time, when I remember. It might sound a bit too grand for a home-based business but I think that a home-based business is particularly vulnerable to catastrophic failure because it usually relies on a small number of people, a limited amount of critical technology and a small number of systems. A house fire, an illness, a house robbery or even a toddler or pet could cause permanent and catastrophic business disruption to most home-based businesses. If you have not read my ABN blogposts before, I have recently started an online parenting magazine and I am currently running it from home. I have a small number of contractors and volunteers I rely on to develop my business and the vast majority of information I “own” is stored in computer hard drives in my office and in mysterious things called “servers” and ”hosts” on the other side of the world. So I have decided to add a business continuity plan section to my business plan. It can be expensive to engage a business continuity expert but if you would like to find an expert in Australia, here are two places to look: Continuity Forum and The Australian Chapter of the Business Continuity Institute . The essential areas that need to be covered are:
Prevention: what do you do now to prevent or reduce risks to your business?
Preparedness: what do you do now to make sure that you could quickly respond to and recover from a business disruption?
Response: when you are confronted with a crisis, what will you do to minimise its impact?
Recovery: what actions would you take to reduce the time it takes for your business to recover from a disaster?
So I have been thinking about my parenting website, the systems behind it, the people I rely on, the insurance I am choosing and the technology I use. I have spoken to a colleague who is an expert in this area and trawled the internet for information. You should consider getting professional advice on some of these individual issues but here’s a quick synthesis of what I have learned:
- Have a plan (and follow it) for regular back-up of your technology-based and hard-copy based information, systems and records. For a great example of what can go horribly wrong, read about Janet Beckers’ experience when her website host went missing.
- Work out where and how you would run your home-based business if your home was no longer available.
- Make sure that you are fully insured against all risks – that usually means comprehensive Professional Indemnity and Public Liability cover and making sure that your home insurance policy covers valuable items in your home office (e.g. your computers, software, cameras, phones). As part of this process, it’s a good idea to make an inventory of the items you own that would require replacement.
- Create a back-up of all the contact information you need for critical service providers to your business and store it off site and/or online in the technological “cloud”. (Some of this may be stored in your computer’s hard drive and some may be in items such as address books or business card folders, for example – and don’t forget to back up/regularly synchronise your mobile phone or PDA. Create a backup of your social media contacts, ‘friends’ and ‘followers’.
- If you have an e-commerce website – make sure that you have reliable back-up of all customer and order information.
- Try to set aside an amount of cash for an emergency; you may need to use it to replace items, obtain urgent services or pay for extra assistance from a consultant.
- Update your business continuity plan regularly and make it a part of your written business plan.
Looks like I have some work ahead of me!
