Did you know that 31 March is “World back up day”? A day dedicated to making sure you have copies of all your important documents and that all your data is backed up, preferably offsite or in the cloud. For businesses this is best practice and something you should be checking on a regular basis, it shouldn’t be something you do just once a year on a special day.
Backing up your data and your systems is crucial – after all, in today’s technological world, it’s likely these are the backbone and life blood of your business. But what about the business itself? Is that backed up with Business Interruption insurance?
If you run your own business, you’ll have business insurance in place to cover your people, equipment and offices. Depending on what you do, you may also have product liability insurance and professional indemnity insurance. All of these protect you financially if an insured event occurs.
But what if something happens that forces your business to close for a period of time? None of these insurance products will cover that loss of income. That’s where Business Interruption insurance comes in. If your business is impacted by a disaster, such as a fire, flood or act of terrorism, resulting in you being unable to trade for a while, Business Interruption insurance will cover you.
Even with business insurance and business interruption insurance in place, it’s likely that your business won’t be fully protected in the event of a disaster. This is because while insurance will provide financial compensation to help repair damaged buildings and replace ruined equipment, it won’t provide any practical support.
When disaster hits, it’s often practical support that businesses need. Many are surprised and shocked to find this support isn’t available when they ring their insurers to notify them of their claim. Insurers will send out a loss adjustor to assess the damage and calculate the value of the claim, but they won’t advise the business owner of the steps they need to take to get back up and running.
This is even more surprising when you consider that the chances of business failure increase the longer a business remains closed after a disaster. Yet the actions taken in the immediate aftermath of a disaster can significantly influence the final outcome – a chaotic approach may result in closure of the business long term; conversely, a focused approach with a clear set of priorities will help the business get back on its feet and ultimately pull through.
The missing piece of the puzzle to fully protecting a business is having robust disaster recovery measures in place. The most effective way of achieving this is by employing the services of a specialist disaster recovery supplier. First Recovery is one such specialist. In the event of disaster striking, we deploy an experienced Disaster Event Manager who arrives on site the same day and gets the stricken business back up and running in a recovery centre within 24 hours. First Recovery provide an affordable solution to small businesses and SMEs that could mean the difference between survival and failure. This year on World Back up Day why not talk to the team at First Recovery and put a back up plan in place for your business?