I have you noticed a difference in my article today? I am starting with a massive picture to introduce the importance of a Contingency Plan for your business also known has a Disaster Plan. Either be a Small Business or a Large Organisation including a Sole Trader you need to have one on file in case of disaster and your business suddenly disappeared due to the severity of the event or damaged.
Business Continuity
None one want to think of the worse when running a business but we all knows "shit" happened and that it's good to have preventive measure in place which unable recovery and resilience. If you do not know what is a Contingency Plan it is a mighty great plan which looks at all the possible areas where disaster can strike in a business and solution are thought of on our to prevent this disaster happening, then measure are put in place to be used in time of recovery. Henceforward, the Contingency Plan deal with what might happen in the future and unable business continuity.
As an example of its usefulness I will demonstrate the heading of my picture and apply to our business Girlfridayz so you can see how one might be conducted on a small online business and information to place in your plan, However, you can get several template online to start off with some are free and for other you'll need to pay a fee.
You can create your own one pertaining to your business and its industry. Many areas fit for every businesses when it concern Electricity, Gas, Computers and other but it is best to conduct one associated with your business as every businesses run their business differently, use different equipments, infrastructure, structure, resources, offices, location and threats, internal set up, therefore, it is best to conduct an individual one for your business as using a type of template one size fit all.
Critical Infrastructure Protection
In case of infrastructural damage to fitting and fixture of our office and some of it part break and causes damages we are covered by the building insurance of our landlord. Meaning should disaster strike we are protected protective measure as been put in place.
Occupant Emergency
In case of an unforeseen accident, trip or fall of one of our customer, associate or potential customer visiting our office for initial appointment or follow up appointment if necessary or attending Girlfriday Local Event we have a liability certificate insurance who cover our business in case of unfortunate incident to our visitors.
We also ensure that our office is free of clutters, debris and hazard. Also that our office is clean and tidy and including all area leading to our office place are kept tidy and free of debris and hazard. Meaning should disaster strike we have put preventive measure in place. We also have a full First Aid kit, incident and record book and a risk assessment completed with mitigation plan. If you have 5 staffs or more it a legal requirement in the UK to have an office risk assessment.
Depending on your office location you may have more as a legal requirement such as fire poster display, Health and Safety poster, fire preventive equipment, information on who to call on the wall visible to staff and visitors in case of emergency such 999, electrical pat testing information, gas safety notice if gas is used in your business and other pertain information which are a must.
Information System
At Girlfridayz we have information system in place which tells us who to contact in case of crisis with our online business or our visitor or when everything is fine and it helps run our day to day business. We built it when we started and update it as the year goes by if information changes, with our marketing activities, the data we store, manipulate, use and processes to achieve our goals. This very helpful and save you time to look for information when a crisis developed as people tends to panic or stress out but it not necessary when you ready and prepared. You be more equip to deal with the issue at hand easily.
We used our information systems to help us plan, control and organised the information in the functional area of our business hardware and software, data, processes and people. We added a video below for you to fully grasp what is it. If you have a brick and mortar business having a good information in place is mighty important for your business survival.
An Information system has 5 components which are hardware (Physical devices), Software (program that tell the computer what to do or the users), Data (Is a piece of information manipulated by the software: Ie In Itune the data would be the music file or information about the music), People (All people involve: Ie software developer, user of the program) and Processes are the step you go through to achieve your goal and they are several before you achieve your goals in term of computing and in your business.
In business processes are mighty important to accomplish business goals and are a big deal, hence having good processes in place in your business can make a huge difference in winning deal and your bank balance. It is a must to have information systems management in place when running an online business and update it on a regular basis, to keep it ticking properly in the background to ensure piece of mind and business continuity.
Girlfridayz digital limited an award-winning online marketing company provide you with business support and support you with your business processes planning and digital marketing amongst other important tasks for business survival we work in the background to ensure that your processes are ticking fine while you do what you do best.
What is an Information System explain in this video
Cyber incident response
At Girlfridayz we are protected against cyber attacked but on occasions virus, phishing, trojan and spyware infiltrate themselves in our software and corrupted window files, connection files, or you download a program update and its comes with several other programs you did not and if you do not watch careful the installation process you get these unwanted programs with virus in it or internet download too. This is critical to our business if our computer is dead or people steal valuable data. So we have a good anti-virus who kill them and removed permanently and who deal with the internet too it must if you run an online business for protection.
We backup our data regularly not on the computer itself but external saving devices to protect our datafile and also run anti-virus program who remove the threats and clean the vault to ensure the threats is deleted totally with the shredder as simply deleting a file mean that it is still seating in your hard drive in a cluster of your drive not accessible to you but accessible via another software which retrieve deleted file but if you use the shredder they are deleted permanently and in case of nasties the shredder should be used.
Cyber Security Event means any act or attempt, successful or unsuccessful, to gain unauthorized access to, disrupt, or misuse a Licensee's electronic systems or information stored on such systems. Cyber attacks can take many forms: from malware injection and phishing, to hacking and ransomware. Some types of attacks are more effective than others, but all present a significant - and increasingly unavoidable - business risk. In order to counteract that risk, it helps to understand the different cyber threats you may face and the various ways criminals might try to cause harm to your business.
A cyber attack is a malicious attempt by a third party to damage, destroy or alter: computer networks computer information systems computer or network infrastructure personal computer devices. Criminals launch cyber attacks for numerous reasons: to steal money, gain access to financial and sensitive data, weaken integrity or disrupt the operations of a certain company or individual. Attacks often result in crimes such as financial fraud, information or identity theft.
Crisis communication
At girlfridayz when we received complaint about a service we responded sympathetically with understanding and empathy providing solution and these customers ended up using our services because they were happy with the response, when we've been unfairly attacked by an abusive customer and targeted by an internet troll and a thief or people who want to harm you for no reason or cuss because they do not want to pay for the service. We responded in a polite manner, provided evidence and compromised on occasions.
We do not respond negatively as it bad for business and does not give you any brownie point. We represent our brand and our ethos and our brand is us so we come across the right way by doing the right thing, polite, understanding, empathy, compassionate and friendly including lawful and it feels good inside us. We are open, authentic and we love us and like us and still becoming meaning growing.
It might not be liked by some but it provide us piece of mind but in saying that never give your power to anyone or low your standard just to please other you'll never be successful, do what you say you'll do as action speak louder than word, be consistent and proactive and secure within yourself and see yourself successful and the ability to say no is golden and demand to be treated with respect and correctly because you become what you believe therefore a positive outcome thinking is good and positive attitude toward life is needed.
Crisis communication is a sub-specialty of the public relations profession that is designed to protect and defend an individual, company, or organization facing a public challenge to its reputation. ... The term crisis should be reserved for serious events that require careful attention from management such as serious incident or accident happening to people on business premise or while using business equipment resulting physical injuries or deaf.
The communication scholar Timothy Coombs defines crisis as "the perception of an unpredictable event that threatens important expectancies of stakeholders and can seriously impact an business's performance and generate negative outcomes and crisis communication as "the collection, processing, and dissemination of information required to address a crisis situation which are evidence based.
Crisis communication simplify without all the theories about the public responsibility of a business, image and reputation. In order to deal fairly with a crisis it is best to admit corporate culpability and a provide remedy. You may save face depending on the severity of the event and people forgiveness.
if your company is responsible as oppose admit culpability you to apply the following negative strategies denial, scapegoating, deflecting, pretending it did not happened, blaming the victim, accusing the victim, harassing the victims, harming the victim. You are more likely to cause severe damages to reputation, image and more trouble will follow depending on the severity of the incident.
If an organisation engage in this type of crisis communication above they will build a negative outcome to their business and may result in business closure at worth due a loss of customers or breach of the law. Even if they are a large organisation no one is protected and everyone has their time and will eventually get punished.
Recovery disaster
At girlfridayz we have a recovery plan just in case of infrastructural disaster a set of procedures and what we should do if something is to happen to our computer, its software, our printer, phone, tv we used for event or our host goes out of business, or our computer hardware blow up which did happen the USB caught fire and my computer blow up overheated the fan stop working that resulted temporary lost of business, lost of files and data a crisis and disaster for an online business. We also have update anti-virus and malware and clean our computer infrastructure regularly we basically show our computer some love and we send him for repair if needed as it is under warranty.
As I say early on when you prepared it's not a major problem but a set back, we used another computer at another location the library and since we were insured and still are we got another computer and retrieved our backup files who were fine so customers contact, policies and procedure, databases and picture, music and more were restored. It is important to backup your computer regularly it does not take much time and it is a preventive measure in case of disaster.
A disaster recovery plan (DRP) is a documented process or set of procedures to recover and protect a business IT infrastructure in the event of a disaster. Such a plan, ordinarily documented in written form, specifies procedures a business is to follow in the event of a disaster. There are three types of disaster recovery control measures that should be considered: Preventive measures – Intended to prevent a disaster from occurring. Detective measures – Intended to detect unwanted events. Corrective measures – The plan to restore systems after a disaster has occurred.
Continuity of operation
Here a picture which provide a good explanation of what I summarized about in giving as an example our business.
Conclusion
Girlfridayz has policies, procedures and strategies in place to conduct and run our online business which are part of our processes and we set up systems to ensure survival of our business has disaster can strike at any moment and one must be prepare just in case of crisis, disaster for business continuity and sustainability through time.
If you enjoy this blog post please share and comment give it some love and I hope this spur you to think about a contingency plan for your business or you can contact us and we be happy to help.