SME's & Business Continuity Planning

Did you know….

📌17% of businesses who suffer data loss never recover

📌40% of business impacted by the Manchester Bombing closed

📌71% of SMEs surveyed said they could not survive a 3-month interruption of their business

📌82% of SME’s did not have a Business Continuity plan

A little bit of background….

In my career to date, I have been involved in THREE separate events in which we needed to enact a Business Continuity Plan. Each event was vastly different but all resulted in business disruption and a unique set of circumstances to consider in order to keep goods shipping and the bare bones of a business running.

For the last two of these events, we had a documented and understood plan on what we might do in the event of a crisis. Did it go to plan? Did we have mass disruption and disappoint some customers? Yes, yes and yes. But not nearly as much as the first event I was involved in, where we did not have a plan.

What I learned that some planning is a whole lot better than no plan. I also learned that by have discussions, workshops and documents about business continuity, we had a head start in dealing with any curve ball that came our way.

Recent events

Businesses can be impacted directly or indirectly by any range of events. Consider the current events in the world now. Coronavirus is becoming an ever-increasing issue. Our tightly connected international Supply Chains, with just in time inventory management, is seeing major companies like Apple and Land Rover announcing potential issues with production. We have even heard that the toy supply for Christmas is threatened.

Weather, fire and floods, have seen local businesses significantly impacted in the UK and Australia.

Terrorist attacks have impacted businesses in the cities where they have occurred.

All unpredicted, and most importantly as far as business owners are concerned, unprecedented for them.

The one thing is for sure, uncertainty will continue.

SME Challenges

For most SME’s additional challenges are in play.

📌 Resources are tight and time is spent running the day to day business and the everyday hurdles that need to be overcome.

📌 There is not in-house expertise to support the business to develop and build a Business Continuity plan.

📌 Excess capacity, for the purposes of back up support or additional inventory, is usually not planned for. This is a luxury and comes at a price.

📌 IT Systems are heavily relied on but there is no in-house expertise to support in the event of a Disaster.

It’s a challenge for SME’s but taking the time and doing some advance planning will reduce the overwhelm.

Risk Adversity?

SME owners by their entrepreneurial nature, take risks. This is usually a calculated risk given all the experience and known elements in the industry sector. But this is could also represent the livelihood for not only the Business Owner but the employees and their families.

A major incident could bring the business to its knees and impact many families.

Therefore, in considering doing a Business Continuity plan, the ‘what-if’ scenarios and the risk the business is prepared to take should be identified. There is no right or wrong. It is up to each business, to determine, how much extra capacity, how many additional back ups or resources they need to feel comfortable.  

Look at each ‘what-if’ and have the difficult conversation and, even make an additional investment, if supports to level of risk you are prepared to take.

What should I do next?

If you are a SME and are not sure what to do next, I have prepared an overview checklist and some ‘what-if’ scenarios to think about for your business. Drop me a YES in the comments or send me a DM and I will get it over to you, no obligations or strings attached.

Its’ a starting point for some deeper discussion, workshopping and documentation.

Good Luck!