Contingency Planning

Contingency planning is an often looked over aspect of planning and structuring an online and/or offline business operation.

Some of you may ask:

What the heck in mickey mouse's name is Contingency Planning?

Quick Answer:

Contingency planning is the planning and analysis of any risk management plans and procedurs that are implemented into the running of a business.

Some of you may ask:

Why do we need this?

Quick Answer:

While businesses run smoothly 90% of the time, the other 10% is crucial to retaining some of your customers, your reputation, and your time in business actually making a profit. If this 10% is apparant without any form of physical back-up motive in place, your business is likely to fail. This will become visible in your latest company cash flow report.

A contingency plan should include the following aspects:

• Risk Management Realisation
• Backup & Alternative Methods (prevent business failure)
• Careful Detailed Management Analysis

You may also want to consider some fictional scenarios, in order to manage and plan your strategy to a higher more efficient level.

Remember, a better business can be created and evolved from a business without options. A contingency plan simply helps provide the opportunity for change and expansion within a business, by covering those nasty little pitfalls which some companies often incur.

I hope this has been helpful to some, if not all of you

Thanks

contingency planning is = to plan for the worst.

Originally Posted by ChiTownmedia contingency planning is = to plan for the worst.

Very well put, That about wraps it up in that short sentence. haha.

Yes it does, however it also involved analysing the risks, taking note of a real life example of the plan being put to use, and also evaluating your methods.

I'm not sure how related a contingency plan is to a website (related to hosting, with things like server backups and such) but to a website like this, not sure how far a contingency plan goes.

In terms of talkfreelance, I tend to backup the database on a day to day basis (or when we have alot of new registrations/posts) for the sake of any server crashes or unexpected emergencies. I guess you could even say I have a contingency plan, I always think of new threads to posts and jot them down so that whe the forum gets a little quiet i'm always ready to bring it back to life!

Planning for the worst is vital, in ANY business whether it's online or not. You need to make sure you have the correct procedures in place in the event of any situation.

Such as database backups, an alternative host to mirror the website, things like that I suspect.