How to stay in business after a disaster
Planning to stay in business after a disaster affects a place of work may be sensible - but it has not featured highly on the list of responsibilities that UK directors owe their stakeholders. However, all that is changing fast.
The Government has made it crystal clear that it regards testable planning for business continuity as a key part of a director’s fiduciary duty and a vital component of our national economic defence.
The logic of planning to continue business after a disaster is impeccable. The ABI reports that 40% of all businesses that suffer a major insurable disaster never recover - and the majority never achieve the level of economic activity they achieved before the disastrous event.
If you were a shareholder and saw your asset value disappear before your eyes, whatever the quality of the insurance cover, then you might feel somewhat aggrieved with the Directors to whom you had entrusted your capital.
You might even consider that the company’s auditors had been less than professional by not testing the company’s continuity planning, and in particular the provision to operate the company for at least three months at an alternative premises.
A director’s risk management programme is not restricted to the insurance programme, it should naturally include defence in depth and the provision to keep customers, suppliers, staff and investors happy - happy that they can contact you, visit you, pay you, buy services from you, update their records etc.
By buying seats at a dedicated Work Area Recovery (WAR) site, directors can ensure their staff have somewhere to go to.
Better still, they can ensure that their work area site has been pre-prepared with their IT profiles so that when the emergency occurs the company’s data and proprietary software fit seamlessly.
Seamless are able to introduce you to Work Area Recovery sites around the UK.
The key to the service offered is not just the desks, seats and telephony but critically, if requested, a visit to the client to ensure that their IT is profiled in advance.
It is work in advance that saves so much vital time when a disaster strikes and invocation takes place.
Knowing your software provider can fit their software onto compatible machines ready to accept your data is a great relief, saving hours, days and sometimes weeks of IT problems.
For many businesses having a contract for alternative premises is not just a matter of corporate governance but also a vital sales tool.
Many businesses will find themselves having to comply with the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 either directly or indirectly.
Public utilities and authorities certainly have to convince HM Government that they can continue to provide the mechanism of state and utilities but for them to do so every supplier to them also needs to be able to survive.
Every authority and utility should be writing to their suppliers asking for a statement confirming a tested continuity plan exists.
Of course that also means that the same question should be asked of all critical suppliers. It is not difficult to see every trading business caught up in the requirement.
Either way, most directors conscious of protecting their business assets will welcome the availability of services made available by Seamless.