Prepare for the Worst, Plan for the Best: Disaster Preparedness and Recovery for Small Businesses

Part 1. PREPARE

Notice that this part contains two chapters and is longer than the parts that follow it, "Respond" and "Recover." I didn't plan it that way, but that should be the result: planning is the most important activity you will undertake. Risk management and disaster recovery specialists have an expression, "To fail to plan is to plan to fail." The time and effort you invest in preparation will expedite your recovery from disaster.

The second point I would like to emphasize is that because successful contingency planning is closely connected to a thorough understanding of your business operations, contingency planning almost always yields benefits to your business—even if disaster never strikes. I know a small financial services company that began considering how to treat mail delivery following the anthrax scares in the Fall of 2001. As the company reviewed its existing procedures for handling mail, it discovered something shocking: It was spending $9,000 annually to send inter-office documents by overnight delivery, when an electronic document delivery system would have done the same work at negligible cost. Now, $9,000 is a lot of money to a small business, and any small business owner can think of better ways to invest that sum. In the process of developing a contingency plan, this small business improved its operating procedures and realized a return on the time and effort invested in contingency planning—even though disaster has, thankfully, not struck. Your ...