A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is critical for every company, whether it's a small business or a national enterprise. Without a BCP, many companies have a much lower probability of recovering fully from a catastrophic disaster, such as the destruction of their premises. You may think you will never be affected but, based on 20 years experience in the IT industry, I can guarantee that at some point every business will face an incident that stops or seriously affects critical business operations.

Take the widespread, freak flooding in the UK during 2007: how many companies had planned for that? One can only imagine how catastrophic it was for small businesses. Ask yourself if your company would have coped with such an incident; all those documents lost and equipment damaged, and the amount of time it would take for business to return to normal. What would your customers do? It's a sobering thought.

Fortunately, many businesses are implementing detailed recovery plans and procedures to ensure they can cope with serious incidents. Developing a BCP involves careful identification of all assets (both physical and information-based), identification of the threats and vulnerabilities to those assets, the likelihood those risks will occur based on historical data, and the impact of the loss on the business of each those assets. This process is often called Business Impact Analysis.

A Neglected Area:

A common oversight by small businesses is omission of their telephone system and phone lines from their Asset List, Business Impact Analysis and Business Continuity Plan. This is very strange when one asks the following:

• If your phone system was offline, how long could you maintain normal operations?
• How would your customers contact you if your phone system was down?
• If you have to re-locate premises, either permanently or temporarily, how would your customers stay in touch?

The fact is that the phone system is a key information asset, yet it is often overlooked.

A Solution for Small Businesses:

Medium and Large companies are usually in the fortunate position of having the funds and resources to implement failover phone switches and phone lines from multiple carriers, with lines entering the building from different directions. However, the reality is that small companies rarely have the funds or the skills available to implement such solutions.

Implementing a contingency plan for telephone services needn't be complex or expensive. The solution I recommend to smaller companies is to switch their phone numbers to non-geographic numbers, using a telecoms provider who allows call-forwarding to any landline number or mobile. Under normal conditions, the non-geographic number diverts to your office's existing number, and in a disaster situation it can point to a mobile or convenient landline. Some telecom providers also offer a virtual' call-centre facility and can answer your calls in your company's name, take messages and forwarding them onto you at your convenience.

The costs of these numbers and services are a mere fraction of the cost of implementing spare telecoms equipment, and such services usually come with a web control panel. This can prove invaluable in a disaster situation, where business requirements change constantly. One can just log into the web control panel from any location, and change the phone number's forwarding destination instantly. There are, of course, two issues with adopting this strategy.

• You may be changing your main phone number, so customers will need to be informed
• You will probably need to change your company stationery

However, the benefits of implementing this solution far outweigh the drawbacks. For example, a company would not need to change its phone number again even it re-located to another area code, and it would gain a disaster recovery strategy for its phone system.

Summary:

Whether your company is small, medium or large, the phone system is a key asset and every company should include it in their Business Recovery Plan. If you want proof, you could always disconnect your phone system and see how long you maintain your operations. I would not recommend it, though.