While some took a financial hit, others sank in the storm and closed permanently.
If your small business made it through, you might feel a little more overwhelmed than lucky at the moment. Creating a small business disaster recovery plan will help you to put your business back together.
You could not have prevented a virus from sweeping the globe. But, you can prepare to recover from it in order to minimize the overall damage.
While making a plan prior to a disaster will make it easier to get on your feet again, it might be too late to get a head start if the pandemic impacted your business.
Implementing a plan at this point will ensure business continuity.
Every good plan needs a great team to execute it.
Assign people to different tasks based on their skills and strengths.
You will need leaders to oversee operations and then team members to carry out the plan.
All types of disasters can hit when you least expect it. What type of hazards could your business potentially face?
A list of common business disasters to consider include:
One benefit of creating this amidst a pandemic is that you can pinpoint all of the risks to your company, rather than hypothesizing.
What does your business need to survive?
After you answer this question, create clear goals for your disaster recovery plan. This will make sure the plan stays on track by keeping people focused on plan objectives.
Ensure that your goals hit all of the bases.
You will want to create a unique set of objectives for each type of disaster on your potential hazard list.
Some focus areas may include:
Your chosen objectives should get your company out of the red and minimize future risks.
Determine the critical assets that you absolutely need to function and then decide whether or not you can afford anything additional for the time being.
Make the boundaries of your goals realistic.
Define clear capabilities for your business. Stretching to do things that sound good in theory but will not work for your company will only further the damage.
Before making any solid moves, test your plan out.
Configure a mock run where each person checks the details to see if this can actually work. If they find issues, then get back to the drawing board with the new knowledge.
Even if Covid-19 did not impact you negatively, do not wait to create a business disaster recovery plan. You can see first hand what happens to small businesses who have nothing in place and you do not want to end up there.
Let us help you with your small business disaster recovery plan! Learn more about business continuity on our website.