By Rieva Lesonsky
Images of oil-soaked birds and tales of small-business owners who have lost much of their livelihoods in the wake of the BP oil spill have many of us thinking about what would happen if disaster struck our own businesses. The timing is right, then, for a new website created by the Small Business Administration (SBA) and Agility Recovery Solutions. Prepare My Business is a one-stop, online resource to help small businesses plan for and prepare for disasters, both natural and otherwise.
The site focuses on the four key elements of disaster preparedness and recovery: Planning, Education (webinars), Testing (what to test, how to test it) and Disaster Assistance (such as SBA Disaster Assistance Loan Programs). Prepare My Business offers tools and solutions to help you plan for business continuity, including analyzing your risks and evaluating how well your critical business functions would operate in a disaster.
One thing I really like about Prepare My Business is that it doesn’t just talk about big disasters like hurricanes or earthquakes. It also has solutions to help you prepare for more everyday disasters, like power outages, broken water mains or server failure, that can have equally dire consequences for your business.
In addition to the resources on Prepare My Business, SBA and Agility are also hosting a monthly webinar series on disaster-related topics for small-business owners. The first three webinars are:
- 10 Steps to Business Preparedness, June 22
- Testing Your Recovery Plan, July 27
- Understanding Disaster Assistance Funding with the SBA, August 24
Visit the website to register for any or all of the webinars.
