Does Your Small Business Have a Disaster Continuity Plan? You Need One!

Your small business must make income or you will go out of business and be on the hook for all those loans, bills and employee costs. Have you ever lived through a natural disaster? I have and as a Franchisor for a number of years, I watched what happened when our franchisees where occasionally faced with a natural disaster. During my time at the helm as CEO of the Franchising Company that I founded, I remember our franchisees going through all sorts of things. There were Hurricanes, Tornados, Power Outages, Floods, Earthquakes and Droughts - serious for our company, as we are in the car and truck washing sector.

Needless to say, we did have specific plans when events like this occurred and we wasted NO Time in implementing them. In fact, we often made plans for other things, things that thankfully never occurred. Remember Y2K, yep, we were ready and the whole world could have collapsed and civilization reduced to fighting in the streets and riots for what was left of the food and water supply - we had a plan, I kid you not. Sounds crazy? It shouldn't, before my retirement, I worked on a plan for Bird Flu as well. We planned for every possible contingency.

We even planned for computer back-ups from Internet wide viruses, we had a plan, a back up and although it was rare to actually go to war so to speak and be forced to implement these plans, I can tell you it happened, it happened somewhere in one of our markets at least once every three months, somewhere in the US. It is time you think about it, because you never know and insurance just isn't enough, you need a plan!

Franchising

Managing Risk

Risk management has historically been viewed by many organisations as something of a "chore". However, with an increasing number of high profile project failures, more and more companies and government agencies are realising the importance of risk management. By managing risk more effectively organisations can gain a competitive advantage through such things as:

• Improved product quality
• Increased ability to deliver on time
• Improved Asset Efficiency due to fewer breakdowns
• Reduced costs by limiting legal action or preventing breakages
• Improved reliability leading to an enhanced reputation

Risk Management Techniques

The key to effective risk management is the application of best practice techniques to a specific situation. The principles of effective risk management remain constant, but they must be flexed to take account of the size, shape and complexity of the project. A formal risk committee reporting once a month would not be appropriate for a DIY project at home but may be necessary for a project as large and complicated as rebuilding Wembley.

Step 1: Set up Risk Management Structure
• Determine Risk Appetite: Understand the acceptable level of risk that can be absorbed by the organisation, department, project or programme. The costs of avoiding risks beyond this risk appetite (often called risk tolerance) mean that it is no longer beneficial to attempt to avoid them.

• Develop Risk Language: From a change management perspective, it is imperative that people within the organisation understand each other. Developing a common risk language or "risk glossary" is a vital step to avoid misunderstanding and to ensure a consistent approach.

• Implement Organisational Structure: In order to manage risk effectively, the organisation or project must set up an appropriate organisational structure. Individuals and groups should be set up with clearly defined roles and responsibilities, together with an appropriate reporting structure and meeting schedule.

• The structure clearly varies according to the size and complexity of an organisation or project, ranging from a series of overlapping risk sub-committees through to no more than a part-time risk manager. In all cases, however, the objectives, responsibilities and respective authority of each group and individual should be clearly demarcated.

Step 2: Identify Risks & Issues
Using experienced risk managers and a structured approach can save a fortune in downstream costs for a project. Regardless of whether such specialist resources are available, it is important to first understand and validate the objectives and success criteria of the project to determine what is at risk.

During the risk identification process, each of the various types of risks (Strategic Risk, Operational Risk, Legal Risk, etc) that the project is exposed to must be reviewed. Specific risk areas, such as the risk to the environment, to the technology infrastructure, to the workforce and supplier reliability must be considered. The potential impact of each risk on the timescales, cost and performance or quality of the project is evaluated, along with the probability of the risk manifesting itself

All key stakeholders involved in the project should be involved at the identification stage, not only to increase the number of risks identified but also to ensure responsibility can be assigned and buy-in is generated throughout.

Step 3: Evaluate & Plan
First of all an overall risk reduction strategy and approach should be developed that is appropriate for the size and complexity of the project and the overall risk appetite (See above).

For each risk that has been identified, a decision should be made as to whether to transfer the risk (e.g. through insurance, to a sub-contractor etc.), mitigate it through specific actions to reduce its probability and impact, monitor the risk more closely or ignore it entirely due to a small impact or low probability of occurrence.

All risks should be assigned an owner, a trigger date and the frequency it needs to be reviewed. Specific action steps should be determined in order to reduce the probability or impact of the risks where appropriate and contingency plans developed to come into force once a risk has crystallised. These reduce the impact of the risk or return to business as usual at the earliest opportunity (e.g. Disaster Recovery Plans). Of course, all risk actions should have an owner and be integrated within the overall Project Management Plans

Step 4: Management & Control
During the Management and Control phase, the mitigating actions to reduce the probability and impact of each risk must be initiated and managed together with the wider project action steps.

Exposure to avoidable risks should be reduced at the earliest opportunity, but some risk can never be avoided entirely. Hence the contingency plans developed above may need to be deployed when a risk does materialise.

A risk register or risk matrix should be populated and updated regularly throughout the duration of the project. A risk management software tool can often be a cost effective way of maintaining your risk register as it can reduce the manual workload and help prioritise risk management activity.

More advanced tools can also quantify risk exposure using techniques such as Monte Carlo analysis. In this way, the relative benefit of reducing the exposure of the project to the residual risks it faces can be weighed against the cost of the risk mitigating actions that are required.

Step 5: Management Reporting:
Once risks have been identified and plans to reduce them put in place, it is imperative that they are reviewed regularly. The internal and external project environment is continually changing (e.g. in the case of Wembley the rising price of steel, or the changing attitude of the FA). Some risks will fall away, others will arise that could never have been envisaged at the outset.

The risk register must therefore be continually updated and reports generated at regular and frequent intervals. Management reports should provide clear visibility on the risks faced, enable prioritisation of the activity and facilitate decision making.

A risk aware culture should be embedded throughout the organisation,. This will increase sensitivity to warning signals and ensures continual improvement in the identification, assessment and management of risk.

Using this framework, organisations can plan appropriate strategies well in advance of any risk occurring. The probability of a risk occurring is therefore reduced, or its impact minimised should it manifest itself. Through increased awareness of problems across the organisation or project, companies and government agencies can generate enormous value and process improvements through effective risk management.

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Business Resilience Planning

In the context of today's fast globalizing business landscape and the unpredictable terrorism happening around us, a Business Resilience Plan is a critical business requirement to preserve your critical business processes in order to maintain functionality and ensured continued profitability.

The Business Resilience Planning in simplified terms, must minimally fulfill two major objectives, namely to enable data integrity & data restoration (to ensure continuance of business) as well as avoid or reduces the loss of human lives.

The following outlines the three phases of Business Resilience Plan. This is a framework which is not exhaustive and the scope of which may be adapted to suit your business model.

There are three phases in the recovery process, namely the Emergency Response phase, Crisis Management phase as well as Business Continuity Planning.

Emergency Response Plan addresses the procedures required to respond immediately to any incident that may jeopardise the safety of our colleagues, disrupt daily operations or bring unwarranted external scrutiny to the company. The onus lies on the company to conduct itself with the highest regard for the safety and health of its colleagues and to protect and preserve its property. The purpose of the Emergency Response phase is to provide guidelines to:

" Ensure the safety and health of colleagues
" Quickly identify and respond to incidents that may arise at or near the office
" Help evacuate the building in an orderly manner, if necessary
" Assess any damage or impact of a situation
" Ascertain the level of containment required to limit damage to facilities and equipment
" Identify and apply the necessary emergency activities
" Coordinate with local emergency services and authorities

Crisis Management allows you to have a process for assessing crisis incidents and managing them as well as initiating the business continuity process. It is important to note that emergencies may involve both physical and non-physical threats to business operations. The purpose of the Crisis Management phase is to ensure:

" Steps necessary to safeguard the welfare of the colleagues are taken
" Determination of the extent of the incident is accurate
" Appropriate individuals are assembled into response teams to carry out the required actions
" Effective communication is made to colleagues
" External communications are properly controlled
" Appropriate operating strategies are implemented

Business Continuity plan provides each functional and line-of-business department with a framework on which to resume critical business processes if an incident disrupts their normal work location and the resources in it are not accessible. The respective department's business continuity plans are closely coordinated and supported by the local management support staff for such areas as technology and office administrative assistance in establishing a continuous working environment.

This phase addresses the inaccessibility of the normal work location and its contents. These plans should provide for a worst-case loss scenario. Incidents that result in lesser consequences will be managed by scaling down the relevant parts of the plans.

The purpose of this phase is to ensure that necessary business conducted at a particular location can be recovered within reasonable timeframes and to acceptable levels, to ensure our ability to support our clients in an appropriate manner.

These efforts must be performed in conjunction with the local office's Infrastructure Recovery teams which will include facilities and technology. Once space has been identified and secured, the fitting out process will take place (i.e. furniture, telephony, network, LAN infrastructure, etc.).

Franchising

Offsite Data Backup Plan - How to Select Your Online Backup Services Provider of Choice

When searching for a suitable offsite data backup plan to support your business continuity or disaster recovery requirements, you may find that using an online backup services vendor to be a feasible option. If so, the first stage is to identify a short list of candidates comprising of established vendors that fulfill some fundamental requirements.

Once this has been done, we can select your provider of choice by evaluating which short-listed vendor best meets the final set of criteria, listed below in the order of importance.

I. Around-The-Clock Phone Support

People often forget that while backing up data is done regularly, the same cannot be said for data restoration / recovery activities which unfortunately have to be performed accurately and quickly when the need arises.

Having your vendor to provide guidance over the phone will go a long way to help calm one's nerves and smoothen the "less familiar" data restoration process. Additionally, having a single number to call irrespective of the time of the day makes life easier for you.

II. Enhanced Restore Feature

Many leading offsite data backup plan providers incorporate enhanced restoration capabilities / features to reduce the restoration duration hence cutting down further the downtime / disruptions to your business systems.

III. Optimised Backup Feature

Since data backups are on-going activities that can take up much time and storage resources, you will want to evaluate the additional optimisation features offered by the vendor.

IV. Service Provider Redundancy

Do check that the vendor's data centre premise has incorporated redundancy in various key aspects such as network connection / bandwidth, power supply, hardware equipment etc.

Additionally, leading services providers even have mirrored data centres, each with a separate set of redundant facilities which preferably should be as far apart as possible for the highest level of protection.

V. Easy To Use Online Resources

Such resources will make you as self-sufficient as possible. In fact, it is possible to learn how to carry out restoration tasks efficiently without the need to call the vendor's support centre.

By using the above final set of criteria, you will be able to identify the offsite data backup plan provider that best meets your business continuity and disaster recovery requirements.

Business online blog

Two Way Radios - How to Maintain Business Communication During an Emergency

Doesn't it seem like hurricane season lasts longer and does more damage every year? Summertime heat waves and winter ice storms appear more severe than ever?

Natural and man-made catastrophes, can result in emergencies and power outages that last a few hours, a few days or, in the most severe cases, a week or longer. This can cost your business thousands of dollars.

Emergency and public safety organizations like police and fire departments, medical teams and college campus security depend on commercial two way radios. Your business can also turn to commercial two way radios in natural disasters and other emergencies. Two way radios are an economical resource in emergency situations that can possible save your business money!

Why Two Way Radios Are an Excellent Way to Maintain Communication & Keep Your Business Operating During an Emergency.

1. Two way radios do not rely on cell towers like cell phones do. They operate radio to radio independently from any other system. If the power to a cell tower goes out, or the tower is knocked down, you lose cell phone service. Be prepared and use 2 way radios to avoid overloaded cell phone systems in an emergency.

2. Two way radios do not rely on telephone lines. Phone systems can be knocked out just like cell phone towers. If the power goes out to a phone system, or there is a line in the system that is damaged, you lose phone service. Being prepared with 2 way radios will overcome this potential communications issue.

3. If you apply the tips below and use commercial 2 way radios your team can maintain radio communication around a fixed location or campus of buildings without electricity for hours, even days, in an emergency.

So the question becomes: How can you charge your commercial two-way radio batteries when there's no power to draw from?

How to Keep Your Two Way Radio Battery Up and Running During a Power Outage, Crises or Emergency:

1. Be Prepared: Even if you do not use two way radios as part of your regular day to day operation you should keep the batteries for your emergency radios charged and conduct a radio check once a week. The weekly radio check will reinforce how to use the radios and instill good radio habits. A weekly radio check will reveal if there are any equipment or personnel issues. During an emergency having to train personnel will consume rather than conserve battery power.

2. Have Spare Two Way Radio Battery Equipment Available & Handy. Many commercial two way radio chargers have a slot for an additional battery. By keeping two batteries charged you effectively double the useful life of radios in an emergency. Additionally some commercial two way radios can be equipped with standard sized alkaline batteries. These alkaline batteries have a long shelf life and can come in handy if the power outage is lengthy.

PLEASE NOTE: Not all commercial two-way radios can take alkaline batteries. In fact, most can't and only a few have a special "AA" battery holder that fits the radio. Nearly all FRS radios or "Family Radio Service" radios do take alkaline batteries but they do not provide a signal of significant strength and are not recommended for industrial or business users.

3. Charge Your Two Way Radio Battery with Your Computer If you have an uninterrupted power supply (UPS) battery backup for your computer, it can keep your two way radio working during an emergency crisis or power outage as well. Just plug it in, and you'll have enough power to re-charge your radio battery to last at least a full day, and maybe even more.

We recently tested this process with a common computer battery back up/surge protector unit with Output Power Capacity of 780 Watts / 1300 VA. We charged three full-powered commercial two way radios with the batteries attached along with three extra batteries in the backup slots of three charger cups.

Tip: Make sure to shut down your computer at the first sign of a power outage. It increases the UPS power that you can draw on to charge your 2 way radio battery.

4. Charge Two Way Radio Batteries with your Car or Truck If it's safe to go outside, you can recharge your two way radio battery in your car or truck by using a re-charger that plugs into the vehicle's cigarette lighter. If the power outage lasts a short while, this can provide enough juice to keep things going during the crisis. But if it looks like the power is going to be out for several days then keep in mind that this is also using your vehicle's fuel and battery.

Tip: Keep the car re-charger for your 2 way radio battery in your vehicle's emergency kit, so it'll be there when you need it!

5. Use the Two Way Radio Solar Rechargeable Battery Option You can use your two-way radio during a power outage emergency if you have a solar rechargeable battery pack. Solar power is becoming increasingly popular as a source of alternative energy. It doesn't even have to be a bright and sunny day for it to work effectively. Solar power battery recharging kits can service your two way radio batteries.

Tip: Don't wait for an emergency to use your solar re-charger. You should conduct a weekly radio and charger check to detect any problems and fix them before they become problems during an emergency.

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Office Manual Handling

It is probably fair to say that compared with a Chemical Plant, Metal Finishing Company or Tree Surgery, Offices are normally relatively safe places to work!

What we must remember is that they can become more dangerous under unusual circumstances. From time to time though we have tasks that are far from routine, which introduces hazards that the average office is not well-equipped to properly assess and deal with.

The example we are examining is that of the Office move around, where furniture like everything else is likely to be adjusted or lifted and moved completely.

So when do we have to address this issue? Normally we only consider the risks of normal activities, such as Computer Use or Fire. So at most, the office management has considered the heaviest item that is normally moved - often a box of paper.

When it comes to furniture moving for redecorating, replacement furniture or a simple office move around, we have not assessed the hazards and the possible injuries that may occur. As a result, a move is not normally assessed at all and so injuries result. Some are simple splinters in fingers, whilst others are more serious, blows to the head, concussion or fractures.

So how do we prevent the injuries? Always consider 'unusual activities' as those that need some extra thought. Now of course a Health & Safety Consultant will suggest that you document a Risk Assessment. Whatever you call it, consider the potential hazards and how best to minimise the chances of injuries.

Maybe, buy some High Grip Gloves for those who will be picking up items of furniture, since smooth surfaces on a desk or a filing cabinet can be difficult to grip with bare hands.

Ensure that only those involved in moving items are in the space at the time. This may mean planning for other members of staff to be located elsewhere during the day of the move and so some negotiating with other offices.

So in conclusion, make a plan and communicate it. Accept that there may be suggestions from other staff and that they may be better than your original plan! Be open to these suggestions and you will get both co-operation of the staff and there commitment to making it work.

Online Document Imaging Mitigates Corporate Disaster and Data Loss - Pay Attention!

You are better off decommissioning and destroying your records than having it and not being able to find it. Thats the bottom line of compliance regulatory requirements. While some companies have found themselves in the uncomfortable position overable data, others have to deal with staff spending half the workday looking for information. Research has shown that employees spend at least 40% of the work day looking for information relating directly or indirectly to their jobs. From Google, to the windows search (under Program Files), some have even downloading the Google desktop search facility.

While this may be a stop gap approach, having a compliant, fully configured document management and work flow solution is key to ensuring the security, auditability, availability, and manageability of records. Including documents and email.

Notwithstanding, most companies are very hesitant to shell out $200,000 for a new enterprise class system. Those who do spend $200,000 or more usually put the vendors through a frustratingly long sales cycle, validation process, procurement process and final approval process before the project is even undertaken. Once the project commences, turnover, staff departure, layoffs, project implementation snags usually further convolute the process.

In comes Saas (software as a Service)! For a fraction of the cost, any company can implement an enterprise class version of an ECM / Workflow / Document management system at a fraction of the cost. This is the same software, but now over a secure internet connection, and usually browser based. That is the difference between financing a $200,000 system upfront, and paying $2,000 monthly for the very same product, same SLA (service level agreement), better support infrastructure, automatic upgrades and additional value added services.

This is where companies can really negotiate their SLA (service Level Agreement). Most companies tend to forget that thick enterprise class systems installed on site come with a "checklist" of SLA options, but in the Saas world, you can really negotiate the language of the SLA.

A web based system will ensure auditability and tight user access controls over a reliable connection. This is because the Vendors, fully understanding the implications of loosing clients data will utilize the best, most secure and advanced data centers, coupled with Department of Defense grade security and backups.

This automatically eliminates the pressure on the client to maintain, staff, upgrade, train, retrain and manage an in - house system. Which usually runs at an additional 85% of the system cost itself, plus overhead.

How to Define A Business Emergency Strategy Before It Is Too Late

We all remember how New Orleans, LA looked after it was ravaged by hurricane Katrina. How can anyone forget? The sites of homes flooded up to the rooftops, people sitting by the Superdome with what seemed like no hope in sight.

Take into account the many businesses that were up and running before Katrina hit, and how many have disappeared because of it.

Imagine for a moment you are building your business. You sell widgets, you are buying, selling, tracking orders, doing account, and the many other facets of tasks that go into your business`s daily operation. In a moment`s notice, your business is wiped out. Not by bad financial planning, not by some bad accountant you hired or a lost account, but because of a natural disaster.

Is your business prepared to rebuild after a disaster? Is ready to pick up where it left off, as if nothing happened? If you answered no to both those questions then you need to get an emergency plan in place.

Backup your data. Believe it or not, even in today`s high tech world, a lot of businesses do not back up data properly. Some do it once a night and then the backup is in the same location as their main data centers. This makes no sense. If your building is wiped out, all of your data and all of your backup data is in the same place. You need to separate the two. You should do a backup of your system every night. There are many services out there that offer this at a nominal cost. When compared to what the cost will be when you lose all that data, hiring a firm that specializes in data backup and recovery will be well worth it.

Team organization. Even if you are able to rebuild your data center from your backups, if you and your team, meaning your employees, are not on the same page, and have no idea what the next steps are, or what their roles in the recovery are, you and your team will look like a bunch of chickens with their heads cut off. You should have a written plan in place as to what the efforts of each team member will be after a disaster occurs. Keeping everyone involved, and informed as to what they are responsible for, will make a transition to getting your business up and running again, a smooth one. This plan must be updated periodically, especially as employees come and go.

Write it all down. Finally, get the entire plan in writing. This plan, must be a detailed outline of steps and procedures as to exactly how to get the business up and running. It should also outline what each person is responsible for, how to get the data backup and running, who handles acquiring a temporary space to run the business and so on. This document, will be the most important item of your emergency plan, because it is the actual plan. Make sure each employee has a copy, as well as a saved version on your computer system so it gets backed up with all of your other data. Since you now have a separate vendor handling backup and recovery, your plan is safe. You may want to consider using document version control software such as Documentum. This type of software versions your plan with the ability of people making the changes of checking the document in and out, just the way a library works. When someone has it checked out, no one can make changes to it until they check it back in.

Get your emergency plan in place. You never know when a natural disaster is going to hit, and for that reason, you do not want to be unprepared when it does.

By: Bruce A. Tucker