Size matters not
4 Apr 2007
Contrary to popular belief, SMEs can make business continuity work for them.
Research shows that, despite such incidents as the 7 July bombings in the capital, the December 2005 Buncefield fire and widespread regional flooding, an alarming number of small and medium sized companies (SMEs) in the UK still do not have a business continuity plan in place. For many, this appears to be because developing a plan is perceived as being too complex, involving excessive costs and management time.
This is significant because small to medium-sized businesses tend not to have the inherent resilience a multination has. Smaller firms often trade from a single location and do not benefit from support staff and specialists who can react to and recover from an incident. If they are affected by an incident or disaster, the impact is proportionally far greater than it would be for a larger organisation. A UK insurer recently re-iterated that 80 per cent of SMEs either never reopen, or subsequently close within 18 months following a major disruption. Tangible evidence from the Buncefield fire suggests that it wasn’t the big companies that close down after being impacted, but the SMEs.
And it is not just large scale, headline-grabbing disasters that account for all of the challenges businesses face in terms of continuity management. Many incidents have the potential to create serious business disruption: a local fire, utility failure, loss of data and seemingly short-term IT failure are all common reasons for SMEs calling on a business continuity contract. The longer term effects of such instances are loss of custom, or damage to reputation caused by an inability to deliver a service.
Now that the business continuity industry is developing a standard, the market faces a challenge – if not an obligation – to ensure that business continuity is not just the domain of the larger organisations but is understood and affordable to all.
It may be useful to break down some of the mystery and preconceptions held by SMEs. Contrary to popular belief, for SMEs, size is strength when it comes to the planning process – the knowledge required to put a basic plan in place often exists between two or three key individuals. ICM believes that getting these people together to document their thoughts and knowledge can achieve around 80 per cent of the requirements of a plan. Checking contract obligations. IT requirements and staff concerns will provide the fine detail of the final 20 per cent but in any event, we believe that four to five days can see the job done and documented.
An IT ‘health check’ is beneficial because plans will require data to be available and accessible by the users. Regular and viable data back-ups and offsite storage options are simple to review. Beyond this, the ability to communicate, initially by phone and then by email and fax is key to buying time to recover and retain customer confidence. For many organisations, rapid access to a replacement office for just 10-30 key staff can achieve this and this doesn’t cost a fortune. With supply chain continuity one of the key concerns within the market-place it’s in everyone’s interest to ensure that SMEs get the support, education and affordable service that will allow the UK economy and consumers to benefit from a resilience that exists within all organisations – irrespective of size.
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