AMU Emergency Management Public Safety

Business Continuity: Does Your Small Business Have a Plan?

By Kimberly Arsenault
Contributor, EDM Digest

With all of the startup activities that exist in a small business, who has time for business continuity?  The person that has time is the one that wants his or her business to succeed beyond one small event within the business.  Whether the event is a tornado or a data breach, your small business may not survive without the proper planning.

What is Business Continuity?

We all have small disasters that have hampered us during our lives, such as our car breaking down, a water leak in our home, or even worse a house fire.  How did you get past this event?  How much time did you lose being productive?  If you only have one car, you needed to rent a car and locate and pay for the repair of your current car. If you already know the repair shop’s location and phone number, as well as the rental car company’s number, this process was much easier.  If you have roadside service, the process gets even easier.  There is no difference when you own a small business.  The more planning and help you have to get past the emergency or disaster and get your operation back to normal, the better and more resilient your company will be to you and your customers.

Where to Begin

The upcoming series will provide some basics to help the small and medium sized business owners begin and carry out the process of business continuity.  The process is beyond just creating a plan, as this will only create a document that takes space on your bookshelf and not serve your business, employees, and customers well.  As with any product or service, there are, many variations and the series will look at the many issues that can arise during the process.

Dr. Randall Hanifen serves as a shift commander at a medium-sized suburban fire department in the northern part of the Cincinnati area. Randall is the CEO/principal consultant of an emergency services consulting firm, providing analysis and solutions related to organizational structuring of fire and EMS organizations. He is the chairperson and operations manager for a county technical rescue team. From a state and national perspective, he serves as a taskforce leader for one of FEMA's urban search and rescue teams, which responds to presidential declared disasters. From an academic standpoint, Randall has a bachelor’s degree in fire administration, a master’s degree in executive fire service leadership, and a doctoral degree in business administration with a specialization in homeland security. He is the associate author of “Disaster Planning and Control” (Penwell, 2009), which provides first responders with guidance through all types of disasters.

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