Aviva, one of the worlds largest insurance groups, have recently urged SME’s to focus their attentions on Business Continuity Planning in 2011. This was based research carried out online as part of Aviva’s Bi-annual SME Pulse, with help from 500 SME owners and looks into how SMEs are running their businesses.
Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery planning was a question posed to the SME’s; the results which are published here, are quite surprising. Half the SME’s who were questioned admitted to having no Business Continuity or Disaster Recovery Plan in place. 16% of those asked felt there wasn’t a business requirement for one, whilst only 28% of those surveyed said they had a Business Continuity Plan in place. Given the amount of studies that have been conducted about how soon business go out of business after a major data loss incident, it seems not all SME’s are taking the issue too seriously.
The study reveals much more and states that owners of SME’s are underestimating how long it can take a business to get back to normal and continue trading. Obviously this is dependent on the type of business, but it is reckoned 33% of SME owners would be back on their feet within a week, whilst 31% believed within a month. With only 19% of those surveyed saying they had a full contingency in place, with full insurance cover, these figures seem to leave many SME’s exposed and their businesses at great risk.
By carefully planning data backup and business continuity requirements, companies can ensure that thier businesses downtime is kept to a minimum. Could any business cope with being out of action for a week, let alone a month? With no plan in place businesses run the risk of losing their customers they have spent years to attract and maintain the credibility they have built up.
