Three focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money, Business/Entrepreneurship, and Organizational/Management Discussions. In addition to earning profits and operating as efficiently as possible, smart businesses must foresee potential catastrophes. Having contingency plans in place can allow you to survive while other businesses perish. The following contributed post is entitled, Are You Ready For Catastrophe?
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Did you know that a quarter of all companies are unable to continue their business after a catastrophe? Their lack of preparedness stops them from being able to recover effectively enough to enable them to continue to earn a profit and keep the doors open. Large-scale natural disasters are difficult to overcome, which is why you need to be as ready as possible for any disaster that could befall your business.
It’s common to think that most larger disasters won’t ever happen to your business, but they do. Both natural and man-made disasters happen all the time, and on top of those, there are terrorists, business interruptions, hackers and more – great, right? The best thing that you can do is ensure that you are prepared for any number of these disasters to happen to your business. Preparation is the key to avoiding failure, and given that the aftermath of major disasters happen to be business-killers, you need to be ready for the “after” as much as you do to prevent things from happening in the first place. You can get more info about how to back up your power, how to save your documents and how to have a storm shelter for your business, but there are so many more things that you should do for your business. So, here are a few things that you can get started with!
● Get Insurance. Your business, no matter how big or small it is needs insurance. Without insurance, you’re putting your business at risk of not being able to come back from catastrophe. You have to choose the insurance that covers you for all kinds of financial losses, and you should also consider business interruption insurance for things that can close roads, ports and airports – all of these things can stop your business from continuing, which you really do not need.
● Invest In Great IT. There is a bank of cloud-based software out there and it’s recommended that you have a great IT company working with you to back up all of your business files. If your IT systems get damaged in a fire, flood or hurricane, you need to be able to access the information from those computers.
● Plan For Remote Working. If you have something happen to your business, you need to know that you can continue to work. A hurricane can take your office building, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t work. Remote working and communication with staff are both important, and you can do this without an office building. Sure, it’s an inconvenience, so make sure that you have a back up plan to a destroyed office. Remote working is that back up plan.
● Emergency Training. Being ready for catastrophe isn’t always easy but if your staff are well-trained in health and safety and emergency measures, then you will all be able to work together to ensure that you are responding in the right way to any emergency that comes up. The emergency training you provide your staff will change the way you handle any disaster in future.
Hi Anwar,
Your comment about needing to make a good plan for your business IT is correct. I would go even further to suggest that if you haven’t conducted a Disaster Recovery (DR) test of your plan in the last 6-12 months, then it might not be as good as you think.
Part of the plan should describe who is going to take control in an emergency, what systems are going to be shut down and brought back online first, and importantly, where does all the data live? The best DR plan in the world will still take an agonisingly long time to roll out if the person or team implementing it has to start from scratch when you most need them to be efficient.
All the best.
Hello Neil. Thank you for reading this piece and adding your extra insight.