If your business has a fire or other disaster, will you be able to get back into business quickly?

Answer yes or no to each question below.

1. Have you identified and analyzed the possible risks to your business? (Do you know what could go wrong and how likely is it?)  

2. Have you identified your critical business processes? (Do you know exactly what you need to do in order to provide for your customers in a crisis?)

3. If a disaster were to happen, have you assessed the human and financial impacts? How long can your business survive without access to premises, records, computers etc? How much data can you afford to lose?

4. Do you have a staff notification contact list and is it up to date? In the event of a crisis can you account quickly for all personnel? Has a crisis communications strategy been developed?

5. Do you have a designated Crisis Management Team of managers, media liaison, legal, human resource and property experts? (clear thinking and good communications are critical success factors for surviving a disaster)  

6. Do all your computer systems have disaster recovery (DR) plans? And are they tested regularly?

7. Have you identified a crisis management center ie a place from which the management team can manage the crisis?

8. Have you identified a business recovery site? (Somewhere for the work to be done while the damage to your business premises is fixed.)

9. Have all the answers to the questions above been written down into your Business Continuity Plan (BCP)?

10. Have you practiced or rehearsed your BCP with the people involved to reveal any weaknesses that may require correction?

So how did you go?

If you answered “Yes” to:

0-4 questions: It's not looking good, but it's not too late to improve your BCP.

5-8 questions: You might survive, but we could help you enhance the plans.

9-10 questions: Be content that your business continuity plans are in good shape.

Your business needs a plan on how it will recover from a disaster. You need to have planned how to continue your critical business processes, how to contact your staff, customers and other stakeholders. You need to have a business continuity plan.

For more information on business continuity planning, click here