Last week we told you about the importance of a disaster preparedness plan for successfully resuming business operations after a major natural disaster. This week, we want to share with you some great websites and resources that can help you minimize the impact a disaster can have on your business.

Ready.gov

This FEMA-funded website helps businesses and individuals create a disaster preparedness program.

For businesses, it begins with a business continuity plan. Your plan should include a business impact analysis, business continuity strategies and procedures, manual workarounds, incident management, training and testing and program maintenance and improvement.

“A business impact analysis predicts the consequences of disruption of a business function and gathers information needed to develop recovery strategies,” according to Ready.gov. It identifies the operational and functional impact a disaster will have on your business and predicts financial impact. From there, you can identify the impacts disaster would have on critical business functions.

Agility Recovery

Agility recovery is a professional service that provides an easy and inexpensive way to prepare your business for disaster. Recovery services include mobile office units, power generators, satellite capabilities, servers, computers, networking equipment and more. Agility Recovery’s 10 steps to prepare your business can put you on track to business continuity.

American Red Cross

The American Red Cross Ready Rating is a free online business preparedness assessment to help you see where your business stands and what improvements can be made. The program provides you with a questionnaire to test you on your ability to quickly recover after a storm and supplies helpful tips to help improve your score and more adequately prepare. Ready Rating’s five preparedness actions can help your business recover faster.

We encourage you to explore these resources and to consider developing a disaster recovery plan to help reduce the time it takes your business to recover and the financial impact of a disaster.