09/ 20/ 2006
by Lena Basha
On Aug. 14, 2004, Hurricane Charley, a Category 4 storm, was headed straight for Sarasota, Fla.--and Art Lambert was ready.
When early reports predicted that Lambert's business lay in the storm's path, the co-owner of Sarasota-based LexJet Corporation, a worldwide provider of digital printing solutions, assembled his disaster preparedness team to implement its continuity plan: Within 24 hours, the team set up a mobile office 200 miles away in Fort Lauderdale.
"We're pretty casual here, but we take a serious approach to disasters," Lambert says. "We have 15,000 customers and 85 employees who depend on us, so we better be ready."
The night before the storm hit, Lambert and a few key IT employees loaded the business' servers into a van and drove three hours across the state to office space Lambert leased in Fort Lauderdale in anticipation of a major storm. By 6 a.m. the next morning, seven LexJet employees were in Fort Lauderdale taking calls, processing orders and arranging shipments from eight distribution centers, none of which were based in Florida. Back at the Sarasota office, another team prepared for the worst: unplugging computers and moving everything on top of desks in case of flooding.
The plan went off without a hitch. The storm missed LexJet's office completely, and within five days the company resumed operation out of its Sarasota headquarters.
After everyone regrouped, Lambert held a debriefing to analyze what worked and what didn't. "Every time we go through this, we sit down afterwards and figure out what went wrong, what went right, and how we can improve the plan," Lambert says. "As a result, we've been able to make our contingency plan even better."
Since the storm two years ago, LexJet has switched to laptop computers and VoIP phone service and moved its servers off-site. This, Lambert says, helps prevent downtime in the event of a disaster and, more importantly, catastrophic data loss.
A recent study by the University of Texas found that 43 percent of businesses that experience catastrophic data loss never recover from it--a statistic that does not surprise Bill Begal, owner of Rockville, Md.-based disaster recovery firm Begal Enterprises.
"If you can retrieve the data, you're not really out of business," Begal says. "But if it's damaged, you don't know where it is, or worse--there's no backup--then your recovery period is going to be a lot longer."
Begal says many businesses aren't ready for a disaster for two reasons: They think it will never happen to them, and if it does, they assume they'll rely on common sense.
"A lot of it is common sense," Begal admits. "But it has to be thought out and put into motion before disaster strikes."
Making Your List
Every business' continuity plan should address employee safety and data protection, but beyond that, look at the specific needs and priorities of your business, Bill Begal says. "If everything were to be wiped out, what would be on your top 10 list of critical needs? What do you need to make your business move? Once you figure that out, address those in order, from most critical to least critical." Consider how important each of the following common business functions are to your business, and how you'd reduce a disaster's impact on them:
- Equipment
- Payroll
- Office facilities
- Software
- Vendors
- Distribution capabilities
- Power
Follow the Leader
"It'll never happen to my business." Thinking they're invincible is the biggest mistake business owners make in preparing for a disaster, says Kathryn McKee, co-author of the new book Leading People Through Disaster: Preparing for and Dealing With the Human Side of Crisis (Berrett-Koehler, 2006). "We found tremendous pushback from employers of all sizes," McKee says. "It's similar to the mental block people have about making wills: If I don't think about it, it can't happen." Yet disaster planning doesn't have to be a monumental task. McKee provides five-minute planning steps in an online excerpt from her book in the "Web Extras" section of www.NFIB.com/toolsandtips.
NFIB.com
Any disaster plan should also include a thorough review of your insurance coverage. For tips on what to consider, check out "Disaster Planning" in the "Insurance" section of www.NFIB.com/toolsandtips.
