Jargon buster

Business Continuity Management (BCM)

A management discipline dedicated to assessing the risks to business continuity and planning actions to minimise identified risks or to deal with disruptions.

Although normally the province of larger businesses, BCM makes sense for the smaller business since disruption can have catastrophic effects.

Small business owners should take sensible steps to maintain business continuity, for example, keeping a "back-up" of important computer files on a memory stick at a different location in case of incidents like an office fire or computer theft.

Recovery Management

Many large businesses appoint an internal team and allot responsibilities designed to manage recovery from potential disruption to business continuity.

However, the smaller business rarely has the luxury of such an internal team and should identify professional advisers who could support staff if the need arose.

Small companies can consider using a non-executive director – an experienced person who works part-time but who could step in and manage the business recovery process if the managing director were to fall ill unexpectedly.