It’s a process that a business undertakes to ensure its resilience to disruption or disaster. A disruption or disaster can strike any business, large or small. It can arrive in the form of fuel shortages, severe weather, IT failure, fire, flooding or simply an electricity black-out. If the incident is large enough it may put a business out of action for a short or long period. Whether the business recovers or not and whether it is still operating 12 months later depends on what advance planning has taken place. Experience from previous incidents has proven that businesses who had business continuity plans in place were quicker to recover from the emergencies than those who had failed to prepare such plans:

1. 80% of businesses affected by a significant disruption close within 18 months of the event taking place because they had no plan.

2. 90% of businesses that lose data from the result of a significant incident are forced to close within 2 years.

3. 58% of US organisations were disrupted by the events of 11th September. One in eight organisations was seriously affected by the event.

Developing a Business Continuity Plan could be the difference between your business surviving after an incident or closing. Emergencies can disrupt your business, affect your profits and damage your reputation, which is bad for your employees, shareholders, customers and local community. By being prepared you will be able to protect your business, your reputation and just as importantly your staff.