smallbusiness.co.uk: Helping your business think big

Summer is officially upon us in the UK, even if you wouldn’t know it looking at the weather, but the recent torrential rain serves to highlight one thing for small business owners - the importance of disaster planning.

Retailer Marks & Spencer has blamed rising interest rates and extreme weather for a challenging quarter and, elsewhere, an estimated 50 per cent of British pea farmers have been hit hard by flood waters. Early reports suggest more than 30 per cent of annual output could be lost in some regions, pushing up prices and endangering the livelihood of the farm owners.

Being ready for the worst-case scenario, so that you can keep trading when the lights go out, is essential if you are running a business. Natural disasters may not be easy to predict or prepare for, but there are plenty of measures that can be taken to avoid other nasty surprises.

If you are a plumber and need your van for work, is there a contingency plan that you can rely on in case anything happens? Is there some cash put aside in case you need to hire another one? Do you have a hire firm’s number to hand?

What if you lost power to part of your office? Could your employees work from home if need be and could they still access their emails? Even if you end up running a skeleton business in the short term, with only the basics up and running you should find that you are able to keep things ticking over until a solution can be found.

The trick is to identify those functions or processes of your business that are essential to its running. Try to take a step back from your business for a short while and identify those vulnerable areas. Then see if there is a short-term solution that could help in a crisis and make sure everything is in place to implement it as quickly as possible.