Business Continuity Management for small to medium sized businesses

Be Prepared

Business Continuity Management (BCM) is about identifying those parts of your business that you can’t afford to lose – such as information, stock, premises, staff – and planning how to maintain these if an incident occurs.

Any incident, large or small, whether it is natural, accidental or deliberate, can cause major disruption to your organisation. But if you plan now, rather than waiting for it to happen, you will be able to get back to business in the quickest possible time. Delays could mean you lose valuable business to your competitors, or in the worst case your business is no longer able to continue.

This affects you

Whether you are a market trader, a voluntary organisation, a SME or a global institution you need to be able to continue with your critical activities, whatever happens.

You also need to make sure that your key suppliers and partners have effective BCM arrangements in place to ensure that an incident affecting them doesn’t impact on you.

Developing Business Continuity arrangements, and documenting your procedures in a plan, will assist you in managing your risks to ensure that, at all times, your organisation can continue operating to at least a pre- determined minimum level. This will enable you to continue service delivery during and beyond an emergency.

Who is this advice for?

This advice is relevant to all owners, managers and employees of small to medium sized businesses.

This information will guide you through some steps that could help your organisation survive an emergency. It’s not a complex subject and doesn’t have to take up vast resources and time. Time spent now can prevent disruption turning into disaster for your business.

This document also contains an example template that you can adapt for your organisation. To obtain a free copy of the example template in Word format for you to amend you can download it from this site , email normit@norfolk.gov.uk or call on 01603 222016.

By following this step-by-step guide, applying Business Continuity Management and completing a plan your organisation will be more able to deal with a disruption.