A Quiet Catastrophe Waiting to Happen

We've all seen the pictures on the news - businesses that have been destroyed by fire or flood and perhaps thought ‘it couldn't happen here’ and that crises only happen to others. This is simply not true - disaster can affect any business, making business continuity management important for all types and size of business.

It's not too difficult to imagine your worst-case scenario, something that may seem so remote that you don't plan for how you would tackle the situation. Disasters, however, may not always be headline grabbing fires and floods. They may be ‘quiet catastrophes’ such as theft or fraud leading to loss of records, data or key personnel. These can have a serious impact upon your business unless you have procedures in place to deal with them.

Business Continuity Management (BCM)

BCM begins by identifying the risks that a business may face and then looks to develop and implement an agreed response to these. The existence and knowledge of these plans may make all the difference in an emergency situation when you need to react immediately.

To develop a continuity plan, start with some ‘what if’ scenarios and consider how they would affect your people, processes, premises and providers, for example:

• What if we were denied access to our premises? This will cover a range of eventualities such as fire and flood or more temporary losses of power or communications.
• What if staff could not travel into work? Problems with public transport could cause issues here. Equally, you might be responsible for providing transport for a significant number of staff yourself.
• What if I was taken ill in emergency circumstances? Could specialist or technical knowledge be denied to the business?
• What if a key supplier could no longer supply? Could an alternative supply be sourced quickly?

Consideration of these factors will give rise to a number of individual problems that would have to be faced under the circumstances. The next stage is to rank the problems and then plan how these could be overcome quickly and efficiently. Your reputation may well depend upon plans drawn up at this stage. How quickly could you reassure your customers that you are calm and in control of the situation?

For any plan to work it must be practical and informative, be agreed, distributed and kept up to date so that everyone involved is aware of what they should do if a disaster strikes. You should also consider putting it to the test. It might just save your business one day.