The last few weeks has seen media frenzy with soaring energy prices and a winter of blackouts predicted. The chances are you’ve reviewed your business continuity plan to make sure you’re safe but here’s some food for thought about how you can protect your business against the unknown.
- Create a business continuity plan
Although creating a continuity plan seems like an obvious thing to say and most businesses will have already done this, the problem lies with small to medium sized businesses that are not totally responsible for their own infrastructure. These businesses may not have a formal strategy. - Review your back up power options
From a glitch in power to a significant power failure, what is the impact on your business? What’s the best provision for you to make for backup power?
- Review the risk management assessment of your suppliers
If your business is reliant on systems or infrastructure supplies by a third party, make sure you get copies of their service level agreements and continuity plans for you. UK blackouts are one thing but if any of your business systems are hosted in other countries how will you deal with systems going down in different time zones?
- Test your business continuity plan
Again, this may seem obvious but around 26% of plans are not tested. It’s a scary thought to have to power down your operation and wait to see if you have managed the risk to your business successfully. But without testing you cannot have real peace of mind.
We may not be able to predict what the winter holds but with planning and preparation you can be sure that a power failure of any type will impact your business as little as possible.
How important is Power Continuity to your Business?