A friend of mine runs a consulting company, called Safe Harbor Consulting, which is focused on business continuity planning. While many large companies, with significant resources, can afford to plan for disasters and other disruptions in their businesses, many small companies completely ignore this important task.
Business continuity planning refers to the establishment and documentation of business systems designed to keep the business running and meeting the needs of its customers in response to some kind of event. These events, usually unexpected, can range from natural disasters to terrorist attacks and even regular power outages. What is your plan if any of these kinds of events were to affect your business?
Even if you operate a small business and do not have substantial, or even minimal, resources you should still at least be thinking about these issues (both for your business and your personal matters). If nothing else, take a few minutes to read Safe Harbor’s very interesting blog posts on these topics.