Processes and IT: Keeping Data Safe and Your Business Trading

In this section we provide some useful advice relating to computing and technical system processes, and we also describe a few simple measures for keeping your general business processes up and running.

To protect that most valuable but intangible resource – your business data – here are a few tips:

Copy your data regularly onto a memory stick, DVD, portable hard-disk drive or backup tape and take it off-site. Whatever option you choose, test it to make sure that you can retrieve all the files on another PC.

One of the most common mistakes that a business makes is conscientiously backing up its data every day, but not checking that the backup is working and that staff can retrieve the data when necessary. You don’t want to discover this problem during an incident. Also make sure that another person has permission and access to get to the backup files so that in your absence someone else can restore your data or recover a lost file.

Print off copies of documents that you can’t afford to lose. Invest in storing important paper copies off-site or scan documents and hold them electronically on a memory stick that you can easily access.

Prioritise your electronic files so you can back up and protect the most important ones. Do the same with your company’s documents: scan them in and save them so they’re backed-up off-site.

Train someone to navigate your data. In an emergency, that person needs to be able to find the files that you need urgently.

Establish levels of authority. Ensure that support companies, particularly IT, finance and other key departments, have a chain of command set up. No point having someone authorised to make important departmental decisions if that person’s on holiday when an important decision needs to be made.

Create an asset register of your hardware, with photographs of each item. See whether your accounting software has a built-in asset register for depreciation of more expensive and durable items.

Design a user policy. Explain the dangers of information security to your information (and IT) users. This policy can be as simple as not downloading anything from the Internet and not opening attachments from unknown sources. Choose the best option for your firm based on your staff and business culture.

Remember the impact that social media can have during an incident. Ensure that staff members are familiar with the rules and make sure that your user policy (see the preceding bullet point) includes references to how employees should be cautious of what they publish on their social media accounts. Inappropriate messages can have a detrimental effect on your organisation and its reputation.

Keep servers and other crucial bits of equipment out of the basement if any chance exists that it may flood. The basement is a tempting place to store these sorts of items and in some cases can be a good solution, but a possibility of flooding means the risk that you have to carry wet equipment upstairs in a hurry. Best to move any equipment now in your own time, while it (and you) are dry.

In the following list, we give you some easy ideas for keeping your business processes up and running in an emergency:

Identify your business’s main profit-earning product or service. Consider carefully all the processes that need to happen to keep delivering this product or service (see Chapter 4 for more on this aspect). Now, with this list of activities in mind, work out what you’d do if the processes failed. Here are some solutions:

• Dual-source vital component suppliers. Although doing so may have a cost in terms of losing a better price by not committing to a higher volume with a single supplier (an economy of scale), it may make all the difference if your supplier lets you down.

Dual-sourcing also provides a hidden benefit in that the two suppliers don’t want to be outdone by the rival on quality or delivery reliability. A single supplier that you rely on and has had your business for years may take it for granted and get complacent, whereas a supplier that knows it’s not unique tends to raise its game and pay better attention to your account.

• Maintain a contingency stock at a separate location to your main site. The best and cheapest way is to negotiate this extra stock as part of the existing contract with your supplier, so that it always has one month’s worth of supply in stock at its location and cost.

Also, carry one month’s stock based on your current forecast. So if you forecast to sell 112 pallets in February, ensure that you have 224 in your warehouse at the start of the month and that the level doesn’t fall significantly below the original 112 figure. Although predictable seasonal spikes in sales are easy to recognise and prepare for, businesses can get caught out with the unexpected spikes in demand caused by external events (an example is the run on antibacterial products during the swine flu scare).

• Know what happens during a week in the life of your business. Sit down with a colleague or two and write down all the processes that take place in a normal week in the life of your business. Then identify the things that must happen for those processes not to threaten the business’s survival. If you don’t have the answers now, Chapters 4 and 7 provide you with options to consider for some of these items. Often, the simplest and most common-sense solutions are the best.

• Keep an eye on the news. Look at how events can affect your business and the wider business environment. Not only can you steal a march on your competitors, but also you may even create a few new business opportunities.

• Carry out a regular quality check on your stock received. If one of your suppliers changes the specification of a component or produces something to a lower than expected standard, make sure that you find out first, before one of your customers.

Create a mini Business Continuity Plan (BCP). Just to get you started, imagine an incident befalls your business premises: say a fire has ripped through and nothing appears salvageable. Take ten minutes with a pen and paper to work through the scenario as you imagine it playing out. How would you recover from something like this? How would you keep going during the worst of it? What are your considerations? Write them down and produce a simple two-page plan for what you’d do. We provide much more of your full BCP in Chapter 8.