Business Continuity??

[Frank99]

Hi,

I am now in the throes of setting up a business and am probably a couple of months from launching. The one thing that I do not have a plan for is business continuity - I know what it is and, given the riots and floods etc, I feel that I want to cover all angles.

Being a small business (there will initially be me and two others, growing to about 10 employees, hopefully), I wonder if anyone can suggest a service or perhaps some software that they use in order that I may cover all my bases.

Am I being a bit too careful and do I actually need to do anything proactive to 'manage' business continuity, or is it a case of just making sure that everything is backed up, safe and secure etc?

Finally, is there a rule of thumb as to how much I should consider spending?

Regards,

Frank.

 

[TotallySport]

Just get insurance and move on, there is no point in worrying about Rioting it effective a very tiny amount of the UK, floods there are things you can do abit more about, like take premisies on higher land thats not likely to flood but its not as simple as that.

Just make sure you get the right insurance cover and move on.

Worry about what will make you money as fast as possible, not what might happen in a very unlikely situation.

To be successfull, make sure you spend less than you take and make sure you are making a profit, the rest is upto you.

 

[John Heath Insurance Brokers]

I would agree that getting your busines right has to be paramount. There isn't much point in having a continuity plan for a business that isn't in business after all.

Arranging suitable insurance is (apart from your legal obligations regarding Employers Liability) a wise precaution to safeguard the businesses assets and liabilities. Your insurer would provide valuable assistance in the event of loss/damage but they aren't necessarily going to be the complete answer. There will inevitably be some delay in obtaining a claims settlement and it can be these delays that cause ill prepared businesses a problem. Your own pre-planning can save you valuable time and help to maintain the business as a going concern.

I know that Aviva offer a full business continuity planning service but it's fairly expensive at approx £1,000 per day (typically 3 days needed but depending on business size obviously). However there is useful information on the business link website: http://www.businesslink.gov.uk/bdotg/action/layer?topicId=1074458463

Hope this helps.

 

[virtuallysorted]

It depends a bit on the business - for some businesses they would be able to continue as long as they had an internet connection and data backup in place. For other "bricks & mortar" type businesses, you could get some kind of indemnity built into the lease of the property. For others still it would be making sure that everyone's roles are documented so that if you got run over by a bus tomorrow, there would be a way of continuing your work.

 

[Frank99]

Thanks again for the feedback.

A few people are recommending that I get the insurance aspect sorted, but from reading up on Business Continuity this afternoon, my only concern from that would be that yes, insurance does provide a compensation to things that are lost, damaged, destroyed etc in any disaster-related type event, but, it will not recover the important data and documents that may be lost.

My thoughts so far are that I need insurance to recover costs etc, and some back-up and precuationary steps to mitigate any losses that may occur, in order that I can return to normal working as soon as possible, should the worst happen.

My early thinking would be things like what I would do to keep the business functioning if the staff could not get in to work due to snow, floods etc. I think that some cheap laptops (useful for what I will be doing) may allow people to work from home if they cannot make it. Just trying to future-proof any potential problems.

The links that I have been given look useful (Business Link advice etc) and hopefully I can ensure that everything, as far as possible, is put into place. What I don't want to do is to have to worry about things after an event, from which it may not be recoverable.

Thanks again to all.

Frank.

 

[John Heath Insurance Brokers]

Frank, it sounds like you've got a pretty good grasp of where you need to be with this.

Whilst insurance cover will assist with the cost of replacing damaged items in the event of a loss, it can also be arranged to cover loss of gross profits/increased costs of working/loss of gross fees following a loss. For example, if you are trading from a shop and the shop is damaged/destroyed in a fire you would be looking to claim for the costs to repair/rebuild the shop plus replace fixtures & fittings/contents/stock etc. In addition though the business now isn't trading so you should be able to claim for the lost gross profit whilst the business is reinstated. By covering this aspect of your business it demonstrates how insurance cover can help to keep a business running whilst dealing with a claim.

This cover is referred to as Business Interruption cover and it is crucial to the survival of a business as it provides the money to help a business to continue. Depending on the nature of your business, it can be arranged to indemnify the business for 12, 18, 24 or 36 months.

Your business continuity reasoning is spot on. Insurance cover cannot replace your data for example. However, there are policies that can cover the costs your business will incur in reinstating that data onto newly replaced systems.

A good combination of the insurance and sensible precautions/planning would be my advice.

 

[TotallySport]

Thanks again for the feedback.

A few people are recommending that I get the insurance aspect sorted, but from reading up on Business Continuity this afternoon, my only concern from that would be that yes, insurance does provide a compensation to things that are lost, damaged, destroyed etc in any disaster-related type event, but, it will not recover the important data and documents that may be lost.

My thoughts so far are that I need insurance to recover costs etc, and some back-up and precuationary steps to mitigate any losses that may occur, in order that I can return to normal working as soon as possible, should the worst happen.

My early thinking would be things like what I would do to keep the business functioning if the staff could not get in to work due to snow, floods etc. I think that some cheap laptops (useful for what I will be doing) may allow people to work from home if they cannot make it. Just trying to future-proof any potential problems.

The links that I have been given look useful (Business Link advice etc) and hopefully I can ensure that everything, as far as possible, is put into place. What I don't want to do is to have to worry about things after an event, from which it may not be recoverable.

Thanks again to all.

Frank.

you cannot and should not plan for small events that are not likely to happen, again the snow last year caused a few issues, but to spend money on Laptops just incase is rediculous, in that case you might as well by a stretcher incase someone has an accident, and while your at it buy an air ambulance.

There are processes which you can put in place to make sure people will continue to work, let us know what your business is and I am sure people will list the things you need to consider and offer solutions.

 

I can't help wondering if there is a little twist to come in this thread.

When you do your SWOT analysis you will have identified the threats to your business. The next step is to categorise them in order of likelihood and relevance. Those that are reasonably likely and/or have the greatest impact on your business need to be mitigated, whereas 'lightening-strike' scenarios can generally be bundled together within a generic insurance policy.

If you try to cover all scenarios you will never move on.

 

[Deleted member 99939]

Business Continuity Management (BCM) is a straightforward method of establishing your business' essential processes or services and putting plans into place to restore your business operations to full capacity as swiftly as possible after an incident.

According to a recent report by Aviva, approximately half of SME businesses do not have business continuity plans in place, with a further 16% that did not feel that they needed one.

Over a third of SMEs interviewed for the Aviva report believe it would only take a week to return to normal trading, with a further third estimating that they would require one month to resume "business as normal". In reality, a full return to normal business operations can take over 12 months and it would seem sensible for business owners to take time to prepare for those unforeseen events and ensure that contingency measures are in place.

Any number of incidents can bring a business to a grinding halt, and simply returning to "business as usual" is not where it ends. For this reason, when planning for serious incidents like fire or flood, it is critical to look beyond the basics and effective business continuity planning should look at every possible impact on the activities of the business, including pandemics, communications links, damage to customer relations, etc.

For the smaller business particularly, any disruption is likely to be more damaging than for a larger operation, especially as smaller businesses are often quite specialised operations and the shortest downtime can have a disproportionate effect.

By making business continuity awareness a part of the business planning process, you can be confident that if a disruptive incident were to occur, you will have the resources and the knowledge to enable you to regain your full operational capacity in the shortest possible time, without the panic that can ensue without comprehensive plans in place.
This forward planning can help with insurance programme design and costs as many insurers prefer those organisations which have fully considered the risks to their business and put plans in place to mitigate any losses. It can also assist with winning contracts, particularly from the public sector and larger organisations, as many of these will insist on their providers have an effective business continuity plan in place, or certainly look more favourably on those that do.


Hope this is of some help?

 

[ThePublisher]

For my business, it's data loss which would be the biggest issue. In my first year I learned the hard way the importance of backing up data when my 4 month old laptop crashed taking a lot of data with it. I now have a system which backs up daily, minimising this issue.

 

[John Heath Insurance Brokers]

@LisaP - I've seen first hand the difficulties encountered by businesses trying to recover after loss/damage - it's taken much longer than they envisaged in each case. Hence my short reference to business interruption cover above, this helps to take the financial pressure off.

@ThePublisher - we use an off-site backup service with mozy as well as other forms of physical backups (tapes etc). It's worked ok so far.

 

[kerlinfaxo]

The business continuity is the organization 's ability to recover from a disaster and unexpected event and resume or continue operations. Every organization should have a plan in place that outlines how this will be accomplished. The key to successful disaster recovery is to have a plan well before disaster ever strikes. The key merits that has to be measured in a disaster recovery environment is the Recovery Time Objective(RTO) and Recovery Point Objective(RPO). Could you please provide some more attachment links for the detailed view of the topic?


Credit Union Business Continuity Plan
Business Continuity Plan

 

[Quest Cloud Solutions Ltd]

You're not being over-cautious at all... Research has shown companies that aren't back up and running in 10 days after a total loss are at high risk of going under.

You should definitely opt for some form of file backup (stored off-site or hosted in the cloud preferably), but you may want to consider full disaster recovery solutions (uses incremental imaging software to take a snap-shot image of your WHOLE system - if you go for a cloud based DR system and you lose your on-site hardware, you can then host the image in the "cloud" and access it virtually, from anywhere, as if it were the original server). I guess it depends on how important you feel your data is to the running of your business...

Cheers

Ryan