Developing a Business Disaster Recovery Plan

Businesses forced to close down after a disaster are likely to never open again.  You can not avoid the risk of a natural disaster; you can plan, and lower your risk of failure.  Here are some steps.  And call us to talk about risk management; or click here to contact us.  We can send you some basic plan documents, or sit down with you and go over serious analysis of your specific risks and protective opportunities. 1-800-548-2329.

Steps in Developing a Plan:

• What are the most crucial activities in your business?  What must go on no matter what?  Write those down in priority order.
• Put together a list of critical phone numbers and addresses.  Which people support your most crucial activities?  List employees, vendors, service providers.
• Make sure you have multiple ways to contact employees.  If power and Internet are down, how will you communicate business needs and whether the business is open or shut?
• Decide on your actions and communications to prevent loss of customers.  You can call them, email them, take out newspaper notices, post notices on your web site, post physical notices on your building.
• Do you have crucial suppliers who might be taken out by the same event?  How can you plan for that?
• How will you protect the premises after the event?  How will you protect employees and customers?  There will be difficulty in getting clean-up and remediation services after a disaster.  Generators, plywood, chain saws, and other supplies will be very hard to get just before a hurricane; should you, and can you afford to, purchase crucial items well in advance?  Contactors will have long backlogs; should you get a commitment from someone before the event?
• Protect your building and contents.  Sump pumps will fail when power goes out. Old roofs will leak and new roofs might.  Is there anything that should be moved out of harms way? 
• A couple of insurance issues: Flood insurance won't cover some contents below ground level.  And it takes 30 days to go into effect, so you can't buy it at the last moment.  If you have an old building, it may have to be brought up to code after a loss.  Do you have coverage for that extra cost?  Talk to us before the event.
• Keep duplicate records, offsite.  Or scan them and keep them in a remote commercial server. 
• Other business issues:  Extra Expense coverage so you can spend what you need to keep going.  Valuation of building and contents; make sure you have enough to replace things.  Business Income can give you a year of lost profits and crucial expenses.  Is there a long lead time to replace any of your equipment?

Call us at 1-800-548-2329 or click here to contact us if you want to review your insurance with us or just get advice.