If the last two years have taught us anything, it’s that to thrive, SMBs have to be prepared to quickly switch gears in the event of a crisis. This is where a business continuity plan (BCP) comes in. A BCP is an important document that defines and documents the actions your company will take in the event of a disaster.

Types of disasters to plan for…

1. Natural disaster
2. Cybersecurity incident
3. Any other emergency that could interfere with business operations

In our experience, the best BCPs take into account all possible scenarios and outline an action plan and standard operating procedures that will ensure an appropriate response and a timely recovery. Take a look below at four reasons why we recommend that you and your SMB’s management team create and put a business continuity plan in place.

1. Business Continuity Management Will Help You Manage Financial Loss

A BCP is an essential part of business continuity management, which is all about planning ahead, so your business operations keep running even through a crisis. Strong business continuity saves money, time, and company reputation. It also assures stability in the overall business management, as it helps you and your team foresee possible disruptive incidents, so response can be quick and effective.

ITIC said that 47% of surveyed SMBs who responded to their 2020 Hourly Cost of Downtime Survey, estimated that one hour offline could cost them up to $100,000 in expenses related to lost revenue, a decrease in staff productivity, and response by the IT department. The longer businesses take to recover from an incident, the higher the potential for financial loss.

In our experience, the best practice is to be prepared to take action right away, and the best way to be prepared is to include risk management and business continuity management into your company and prepare a BCP.

2. Business Continuity Plan Helps Your SMB Stay Afloat Even During Crisis

The pandemic caught us all by surprise. Nationwide, businesses that had a BCP in place, instructing them to switch to remote operations in the case of a health emergency and lockdowns, were quick to respond. Others were left scrambling to figure out how to provide their customers the service they were used to, while most staff were juggling the home-office setup and their home life.

An extended outage risks financial, personal, and reputational loss for a business. For the second group above, the time spent on getting “back in business” likely meant significant trade-offs that negatively impacted their bottom line; for example, customers going to competitors to fill immediate needs. According to the portal Oregon Live, nearly 13,000 businesses in Oregon closed in early 2020. Most of these companies end up recovering but, unfortunately, the reality for some SMBs was a permanent closure of the business.

We believe the more insight you have into how your SMB’s leadership will respond in the event of a disruption, the better your BCP will be, and the better chances of quick recovery and saving the business. Here are a few categories of incidents to keep in mind as you gather your team to write your plan:

• Disasters, natural or man-made: Oregon Planning, the state’s Department of Land Conservation and Development, identified six natural hazards that are likely to occur in the state: floods, landslides, earthquakes, tsunamis, coastal erosion, and wildfires. We recommend you make sure all six are on your plan. You may also consider droughts, dust storms, volcanoes, windstorms, and winter storms. These incidents may thwart your team’s ability to arrive to work on time or could disrupt normal delivery schedules from providers. Examples of man-made disasters are disruptions to vehicular traffic or virtual services due to accidents, which may keep your team from delivering the expected results.
• Data loss or exposure: Whether it is human error due to a lost device or technological failure–such as corrupted files–your SMB should outline what your team will do in the event of losing access to data or the unplanned exposure of data.
• Damages to infrastructure: Vulnerabilities in your company’s physical infrastructure, due to fire or water damage, can interfere with business operations. We recommend you take these into account when writing your BCP.
• Security breaches: What will your team do if faced with a ransomware attack or other types of cybersecurity breaches? What about physical security, such as intrusions into the building and theft of company property?
• Corporate espionage and sabotage: You and your team will need to deal with stolen files, damaged equipment, and other forms of sabotage immediately to mitigate risk and loss. We recommend you put a standard operating procedure for this type of incident in your BCP as well.

3. A BCP Protects Your Company’s Assets

Aside from keeping these types of disruptions in mind and setting up standard procedures on how to react, your plan should also detail the necessary technological components and data that will keep your business functional. In our experience, the best way to identify these necessities is to create an inventory of backup devices and cloud services, including the details surrounding when and where you will back up data.

We encourage leaders like you to engage stakeholders in all departments, in case there is a need for new tools and solutions that could support business continuity management. If you bring the teams together, you may find that you can serve more than one business unit with a single solution. You could ask managers to hold team huddles with their individual contributors first, then compile the feedback and report back to IT with what they have found.

We have found working together like this helps build trust between your IT department and other business units, which further strengthens business continuity planning and risk management. Important questions to ask your IT team or MSP as you are writing your BCP are:

• How will IT maximize security for your SMB?
• How will IT handle company assets in the event of a disaster?
• How will you, your staff, and your customers access data in the event of an outage?
• Do any business units require specialized solutions?
• What additional expenses should we plan for?
• Do we need additional support to safeguard our systems from vulnerability?

4. It Helps Build a Good Reputation for Your SMB’s Brand

Future-proof your business with a BCP

To prevent large financial losses, an impact on your brand’s reputation, and loss of your customers’ confidence, your organization needs a business continuity plan.

We recommend you take the time to understand the challenges and problems your staff face on a day-to-day basis to take these issues into account when writing your BCP. Talking to stakeholders in each department will give you the insight you need to start building a plan that will manage risk and ensure your business continues to work, even when faced with disruptions like natural disasters or cyberattacks.

At StepUP IT, our job is translating business goals into technology solutions. If you want your business to remain safe in the event of disasters but have little time, don’t worry – you can get in touch with us now to talk about ways we can help.