Business Interrupted

Your business is going great. Sales are up, your team is working hard, and growth is continuous. You probably aren’t thinking about what could go wrong right now, but are you prepared for an interruption in your business? Natural disasters such as hurricanes and tornadoes come unexpectedly, but if you take some precautions now, it can soften the blow and protect your business if that should occur.

An operational interruption would involve your building becoming unavailable to your staff and customers for any number of reasons. Having backup laptops that allow key employees to work and connect to the Internet remotely will keep your company from getting too far behind. Make sure your team has high-speed internet connections at home. If you also have a cloud-based application, that can work as an alternative to installed programs that get lost in a computer crash or when they are unavailable.

Financial interruptions can also happen. Some are avoidable, others aren’t, but here’s what you should do to create a safety net for your business should your cash flow get interrupted. Consider purchasing a “business interruption” rider on your property. Associated with that, a casualty policy will pay you cash when the claim is accepted. Just be sure to read through the policy entirely as some are better than others.

Finally, digital interruptions can happen unexpectedly out of the blue. There has been an increase in digital assets and a decrease in physical assets. In other words, more important files and materials are being stored digitally rather than in paper hard copies. While it’s a good idea to have both, there are measures you should take for protecting your digital data. One employee should be responsible for enabling every computer with firewall and virus protection and updating them frequently. On a regular basis, copy important data to some place offsite. You can also use cloud-based backup in this way as well. It’s a matter of when, not if, one of these things (or another interruption) will happen, so be prepared and you can save your business.