Having analysed your business and assessed the risks involved, you now know which areas to focus your plan on, be it on customer care during an emergency or on having remote access to your phone system. You will also know which type of potential incident would hit your business worst and how to minimise the damage that it could cause.

You should now know whether you need to be fully operational to survive, or whether it will be enough to operate at 50%. Do you know your break-even point? If not, it is very important to work it out.

Establish what is important to the survival of your business and what the risks are. Whatever your business, there are a number of options open in response to the risks you identify:

• Accept the risk – do nothing and manage the consequences of an incident if and when it occurs

• Accept the risk but put some contingency arrangements in place to provide you with help to continue your business after an incident Attempt to reduce the likelihood and impact of the risk to an acceptable level

• Attempt to reduce the risk and put contingency arrangements in place to provide help to ensure your business can be maintained

• Reduce the risk to the point where outside help won’t be required