From the Simplitfy archive. The advice holds up; some statistics and product names reflect when it was first written. For current guidance, talk to our team.
Disaster recovery and business continuity plans are issues that almost all small businesses fail to think about. Most of the time they believe they don’t have the necessary resources to address it.
Are we completely aware of how much it would cost us if our business was down for 1-2 days?
- Lost revenues and lost productivity - These are obvious. You won’t make the money that you would have if you remained open. This is especially true if you provide a service. Services are inherently tied to time, and time cannot be re-created. Sure, you can work extra hours next week, but it won’t be a service provided at the time it was expected. There are other far more serious consequences of business downtime than just unsold goods and services. There are the intangibles that can’t be so easily measured but have long-term consequences.
- Helping the competition – You give your competition a real edge. Present clients and potential ones may go to a competitor while you are down. Not all will return. Your competitors now have ammunition against you to use in sales pitches.
- Employee frustration – Employees will carry the burden of the extra hours and stress of helping get things back together. That can lead to a lot of frustration, which if things don’t get back to normal quickly, can damage long-term productivity. Most importantly, it can damage the respect they have for management (that means you).
- Negative brand reputation – Your customers will also wonder how you couldn’t have cared enough to make plans to handle trouble. Think of the negative way a customer sees it.