Business Continuity for Small and Medium Companies

An Affordable Solution

With the recent ice storms hitting several cities this past week, I am reminded of the potential impact that natural disasters can have on a business owner. Many of you will probably remember the devastation to business owners due to Hurricane Katrina. For years, small and medium business owners tended to neglect business continuity planning for their companies, and as a result, lost everything or close to it after being victims to disaster. What’s an entrepreneur to do?

Business continuity planning, with the aid of technology, has gotten much easier and affordable to the average business owner. Through the improvement of web technology, it is now within the reach of small and medium businesses to be as agile as larger companies who can afford to have a team of employees dedicated to preparing and sustaining their companies ability to operate after a disaster.

Over the next few weeks I will be writing about this topic and sharing my observations as I work with clients to improve their approach to this subject. Many companies today are savvy in knowing the importance of having an internet presence on the web for customers to find you and learn more about your products and services.

With the changes in web portal technology over the last few years, in addition to public websites, more companies are building private web sites, known at intranet sites. When intranet capability first came into popularity, it was fairly expensive to hire programmers to build a customized site, but today, pricing for an intranet site is now within the reach of even a one person operation.

Many off the shelf software systems, known as knowledge management or collaboration software, are being marketed with prices ranging anywhere from free to thousands of dollars. These software products can be used for the creation of an intranet, or private website, to various degrees of capability. I will be focusing on a relatively inexpensive option that can work for a one person operation up to a 100 person company in my future posts. I will explain how you can design a capability that can be implemented in days vs. months, and will give your company the resiliency to be supporting your customers within hours vs. weeks after a disaster, especially for service companies.

For anyone looking to brush up on some simple terms before my next post, just google “knowledge management” or “intranet” to learn more. Til’ next time…..kb signing off