Avert disaster with simple steps!
How many small businesses were wiped out by hurricane Ike? The statistics are not out yet, but I’m sure they will be staggering.
As with all the hurricanes and other natural disasters that have come before them, there will be many reasons, many of them unpreventable; e.g. being closed down for weeks on end with no Business Interruption insurance or being underinsured for massive property damage, etc. But there will also be reasons that will close businesses for which, companies could and should have been prepared. For most of those issues, I would refer you to one of my sister organizations, the Risk Management SBDC at the Bill Priest Institute in Dallas, 214-860-5821.
There is one issue I find so critical that although the Risk Management SBDC can also address it with you, I feel compelled to mention it here. That issue is OFF-SITE data back-ups. Most companies live and breathe with the information (software and data) that is stored on their computer. Yet they walk out the door every night with the blind faith that it will be there in the morning when they come back to start the next day.
How many small businesses when allowed to re-open will have lost all or most of their operating data: Computers, Financial history, Inventory, Customer lists, Vendor information, Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable?
There are systems you can purchase to back up your own system daily, weekly, etc., or you can hire a service to do the back-ups for you. Determining the right solution for you requires answering a few questions.
1. How long would it take you to recover if all your data was lost?
2. How well disciplined are you to make sure that a back-up is never missed?
3. What is the value of your business?
4. How many transactions do you make on a daily basis?
5. Do transactions have any type of back-up (hard copy or otherwise)?
6. Is it possible the off-site storage location may be hit by the same disaster? Do you think of off-site storage as across town in an employee’s home? Is off-site across the State in a different
city? For example, most Hurricanes coming through Houston are likely to hit Dallas as tropical storms with very heavy rains and flooding. It is possible to lose your data in Houston and off-site
in Dallas from the same storm. It is likely that your data needs to be backed-up and stored in a different region of the country to protect you from a wide spread regional event?
I urge you to consider the answers to these questions and take appropriate actions - NOW. It’s not always a natural disaster that causes the loss of data; it can be as simple as a robbery or the failure of a server in the middle of the night. How much are you willing to risk for the survival of your business? How many businesses in Houston and Galveston (and surrounding area) are going to wish they could do it over again?
