Environment - Disaster Recovery - The floodwater has receded. What now?

The latest figures from the Association of British Insurers (ABI) indicate that the UK floods in June & July are expected to cost in the region of £3billion. There have been some 60,000 claims, of which 15,000 have affected commercial premises.

Your business may have been affected in a number of ways:

· Direct flood damage
· Utilities disruption
· Denial of access
· Suppliers damaged
· Customers affected

It will take communities some time to return to “normal”. In the meantime, even if your business wasn’t affected, it would be a very good idea to ask your self “what if” and consider some of the practical measures you can adopt to protect against unforeseen incidents. In other words start thinking about some Business Continuity measures.

These are some of the key areas to consider in the event of damage or loss of access to your business premises:

· Back up key business data remotely.
· Keep important paper records safe.
· Ensure you can re-direct incoming calls – unanswered calls will lose you custom.
· Maintain a list of key contacts, e.g. customers, suppliers, staff, landlord, utilities.
· Pre-determine how you would provide a basic level of service in the short term.

Imagine you are an office –based business, and you had the above precautions in place. You could move into a serviced office with computers, fax, telephone etc and access your data, receive re-directed calls and so on. In other words, you could provide “service as normal”.

It is more difficult to respond quickly if you are a manufacturing organisation, but measures can be put in place, e.g. sub contracting.

All of this requires you to think about your business and its environment. Having a good business continuity plan gives you, your customers, suppliers and staff peace of mind. This all adds up to good business sense.

John Basinger
ACII FCILA FIRM ABCI DipBCM

John Basinger Business Continuity Consultants.

John was a commercial loss adjuster for over 30 years, handling major losses such as floods, fires and terrorist bombings. He now specialises in Business Continuity Planning for the SME sector.

DOWNLOAD

[ The floodwater has receded. What now? ]