Business Continuity for Micro-Businesses: The Three-Page Plan

The phrase "business continuity plan" sounds like something large organisations have: a thick document that sat in a drawer for five years until someone needed it and nobody could find the drawer. For a small business, that approach is both impractical and unnecessary.

What a micro-business actually needs is a three-page document that answers a handful of critical questions clearly enough that any member of the team can act on it at 7am on a Tuesday when something has gone badly wrong. Here is what those three pages need to cover.

Page one: what can go wrong and how bad is each scenario

List the things most likely to disrupt your business. For a Kent small business, the realistic list is usually:

• Internet or phone outage (most common)
• Key person unavailable: illness, accident, personal emergency
• Office inaccessible: fire, flood, building fault, loss of power
• Cyber attack: ransomware, phishing, account compromise
• Supplier failure: a critical supplier stops operating or fails to deliver
• Hardware failure: server, laptop, network kit

For each scenario, note two things: how likely is it (roughly), and how long could the business tolerate it before there is serious damage? The combination tells you where to focus your preparation.

Page two: what to do immediately for each scenario

For each scenario on page one, write three to five bullet points covering the immediate actions. Keep them specific and actionable. Not "deal with the IT problem" but "call [IT support number], say it is a priority-1 issue, follow their instructions."

The questions to answer for each scenario:

• Who is responsible for managing the response?
• Who needs to be notified (staff, clients, suppliers)?
• What is the immediate workaround while the main issue is being resolved?
• What is the first call to make?

For the internet outage scenario, this might read: "Turn on 4G router in comms cupboard (label says 'Failover'). Notify team via WhatsApp group. Check estimated restore time with [ISP support number]. If outage exceeds four hours, consider switching critical work to mobile hotspots."

That is five lines. It is enough to act on.

Page three: the reference sheet

The third page is a quick-reference sheet of information people need in a crisis:

• IT support contact: name, direct number, what counts as an emergency call
• Key system login details: where these are kept (password manager vault name, or sealed envelope in the safe - never in plain text in the document itself)
• Backup location and access: where are the backups, who can access them, how do you restore from them
• Insurance: insurer name, policy number, 24-hour claims line
• Key supplier contacts: the people to call, not just the main switchboard numbers
• Staff emergency contacts: for scenarios where the normal communication channels are down

Keeping it current

A plan written in 2024 that still lists three members of staff who have since left, and an IT support number that was changed when you switched providers, is worse than no plan. Set a calendar reminder to review it every six months. It takes 30 minutes.

The test

Once a year, run a tabletop exercise: pick one of your scenarios, gather the relevant people, and walk through what you would actually do. You will immediately find the gaps: the phone number that is wrong, the login that nobody knows, the procedure that makes sense on paper but not in practice. Fix them then, not during the real incident.

If you would like help identifying your IT-related continuity risks and building the IT sections of a continuity plan, get in touch.

IT support and business continuity

ClearPath IT Services supports small businesses across Kent, Medway and South East London with IT that keeps working when things go wrong.