A crisis that threatens the survival of your business can happen at any time and without notice. Would your business survive a crisis ?

Whether you run a large organization or a small family business the most common and unexpected threats to businesses are the same. Consider a few examples of incidents that could have a devastating impact on your business;

• Environmental factors - a pollution incident or regulatory compliance failure could leave your business stranded and will almost certainly undermine customer confidence.

• Severe weather – flooding and / or wind damage following a storm. If your business is in a remote location you may be particularly vulnerable to disruption.

• Theft or vandalism – theft of computer equipment and precious business records can bring your business to a complete standstill. Similarly, theft or vandalism of operating plant or vehicles is costly and may pose health and safety issues.

• Fire – few other situations have such potential to completely destroy a business.

• Loss of utility – have you considered what you would do if you suffered a loss of electrical power or if your IT or telecoms systems failed to operate ?

• IT system failure – computer viruses, attacks by hackers or system failures can render your systems useless and affect your employees ability to deliver business functions.

• Disruption to fuel supplies –how long can you operate vehicles and machinery in the event of a fuel crisis ? would staff still be able to get to their work ? would your suppliers be able to deliver essential business supplies ?

• Restricted access to premises – if you had a gas or water leak, how would your business function if you couldn’t access your workplace ?

There is no shortage of cases where no one really expected any of these incidents to happen to their business. And while it may be perfectly reasonable to expect that a serious incident will receive a prompt response from the emergency services, what comfort can you take beyond that ? What happens next and how your business will respond to customer demands and staff expectations will come down to you.

In today’s fast paced and competitive business climate, customer and brand loyalty is ancient history. The ability to act quickly and get back to "business as usual" has never been more critical. Without well structured and practiced contingency arrangements your business could cease trading simply because it was not well prepared.

Hoping for the best and planning for the worst might be an age old saying but, given the unprecedented business challenges that have developed over the last decade, it makes perfect business sense.

Forward planning and protecting the reputation of your business, whatever its size, is paramount. The smaller your business, the more important it is to have contingency arrangements in place. Any incident, no matter how small, is capable of undermining your ability to continue trading and can adversely affect your profitability.

Customers, banks, investors, insurers and suppliers will all take your business more seriously if you have contingency arrangements in place. Staff will also appreciate the fact that the business is doing all it can to protect their safety and place of work.

A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is simply a means of ensuring that you have contingency arrangements in place and that your business can respond promptly and sensibly to a crisis.

Developing a Business Continuity Plan will identify all the essential requirements that you need to put in place to keep your business running. This includes processes and procedures aimed at minimizing business disruption and keeping your customers and staff informed.

A key challenge in Business Continuity Planning is identifying and protecting essential business elements. The principle aim is to understand the critical and non-critical functions and activities that support the business. An effective plan should consider these aspects and identify the essential needs of the organization.

Business continuity planning can start with a few basic steps;

• consider every facet of your business

• decide what is critical and determine how long individual business elements can operate without normal support systems

• prioritize what should drive planning decisions, eg, if an IT function cannot be off-line for more than two hours, what secondary systems and data would you need, where will this be located and who will have access

• think about operational and financial cost of not having a critical function - how much revenue would be lost by customers taking their business to another supplier ?

There is really very little difference between planning for business continuity and buying an insurance policy. Firstly, decide on the fundamental requirements before evaluating the potential contingency strategies and then make an informed decision.