According to a recent survey conducted by the National Federation of Independent Businesses, a small business advocacy group, if you're like 76 percent of all small business owners, you believe that insurance will adequately protect your business in case of emergency or disaster. And, if you're cautious, in addition to your general casualty policies, you carry business interruption insurance to assist with operating needs during a temporary shutdown. Depending on your geographical location, you might also purchase flood insurance. You might even buy extra expense coverage to pay for temporary relocation of workers and machinery.

From an insurance angle, you could have all of your bases covered, but if you haven't yet prepared a business resumption plan (BRP), your business might not survive should disaster strike.

A BRP is a planned and tested response to potential crisis, be it a natural disaster, theft, energy loss, equipment failure, or security breach. Specifically, it's a risk management document that summarizes your businesses' functions, personnel, and assets. It guides you through the steps of recovering facilities, communications systems, and operations, so you can quickly return to conducting business in the aftermath of an unforeseen event.

Karla Glendenning, president of Glendenning Associates, a disaster recovery firm in Centreville, Conn., stresses the importance of BRPs.

"For the most part, typical small business owners-even ones who have adequate insurance coverage-are woefully unprepared to deal with a disaster because they haven't thought ahead and formulated strategies for getting their businesses up and running in short order," she says. "The frantic scrambling that results when there's no formal master plan paralyzes people just when they need to be thinking as clearly as they possibly can. And that paralysis translates into lost customers and lost revenue."

Assembling a detailed BRP to guide you efficiently through an emergency is an ambitious, but necessary, task. To organize your thinking, here are some key points to consider:

• How will you ensure the physical safety of your employees?
• What are your critical business applications and how would you prioritize them?
• Where will you establish an alternative recovery site if your office is not available?
• Do you currently have safe offsite storage of vital records and legal documents?
• Who would be on your employee, vendor, critical customer, and insurance company contact lists?
• How thorough are your current data protection practices?
• Do you have a backup copy of your computer's basic operating system, boot files, essential software, and computer and Internet passwords stored in a safe, offsite location?
• How will you resume computer operations?
• Who will be on your crisis management team?
• What does your inventory consist of (include serial numbers, estimated cost, and photographs)?

Once you have the basic BRP in place, reviewing and refining, testing, and updating are relatively effortless if you set a regular time, for instance the first of each month, for these activities. Keep a copy of the plan at home, and distribute a copy to each of your employees.