Small businesses in the New York City area are enduring the third multi-day power disruption in the past fifteen months. This time there is a tragic loss of life and enormous property damage as well. Businesses are adapting – doing their best to return to productivity while scrambling to cover the disruptions to billings and cash flow that will follow.
Is this the new normal? Should small businesses expect this type of disruption on a regular basis now? In our book, two times is a trend – and this is now the third time. Small businesses can either pretend it is a fluke, or they can prepare to handle it better the next time.
Our advice is to prepare.
This perspective comes from helping small businesses take advantage of online (cloud) functionality for both their marketing and their IT infrastructure. Using these functionalities makes a business more productive when everything is running normally. The costs are so small that the payback is immediate, and that is typically our focus. In the case of disruptions, where workers in impacted areas can be effectively isolated for days, the business is more resilient.
If an isolated worker has the latest version of a critical document, the business can be forced to wait until that worker finds connectivity, or risk inadvertently using the wrong version, or incur the expense of recreating the document. If a physical office location is the only source of common connectivity, the entire business comes to a halt without power. Customers outside the impacted area may not be able to adjust timelines and deadlines. In any case, the business runs the risk of costly mistakes and lost business.
There is a large body of expertise dedicated to formal business resiliency and recovery planning – if you need a resource, we can refer an expert. Definitely explore online (cloud) for your marketing and IT infrastructure – for this, we are the experts. You’ll create a better functioning business, whatever the weather.
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