ICE Vault

ICE Vault is Business Continuity re-engineered to make it relevant and accessible for individuals and small businesses.

“Business continuity is about having a plan to deal with difficult situations, so your organization can continue to function with as little disruption as possible.” - The Business Continuity Institute

Having worked in IT within the financial services sector for many years, I knew all about Business Continuity and Disaster Recover plans.  

But even knowing all that, in my own business I didn’t think it was important. 

After all, I had an e-commerce business with no staff, no premises and all my data was in the cloud. 

My experience of business continuity plans was all about preparing for disasters such as a fire in the building, data loss due to hardware failures, or staff shortages due to a pandemic.

And indeed, when you google ‘business continuity for small businesses’ you will find templates based on these kind of emergencies.

In my opinion, these are a waste of time for most small businesses, as these plans don’t cater for the most likely Emergency….

My business was centred on me as ‘the boss’, so I didn’t need to have a plan for all those traditional business model stuff.

But what if something was to happen to me?

And if I died without having a continuity plan in place, would it matter anyway? Not to me at that point!

It was a call with my health insurance guy that made me look at Business Continuity with a fresh perspective.

He was running some quotes for me…… life insurance was relatively cheap, but accident and critical illness cover was not! 

“It’s because you are statistically more likely to be injured or critically ill than you are to die.”

Now there’s a fun fact for you.

And it got me thinking.

If I died my business was over - end of story.

But if I was in an accident, or critically ill in hospital what would happen?

If I survived, by the time I was back online my business may have fallen apart. I may be left with nothing. Or worse, I may be left with debts from unpaid bills and a reputation in tatters from poor customer reviews.

So I started looking at business continuity with a totally different mindset.

I also changed the name in my head…… this was ICE planning…… In Case of Emergency.

A traditional business continuity plan covers what happens in an emergency, but most templates or guides online will focus on a traditional ‘bricks and mortar’ business.

So, for example, what to do if your building is destroyed in a fire. Where would you and your staff relocate to to keep the business running? Where is your data held? What about computers and other equipment you need? 

But in ICE planning I decided to focus on just one emergency.

The most likely, and in my opinion, the worst possible thing to happen in terms of potential impact to my business.

The loss of the boss, ie me!

While me being dead would, obviously, be bad, I decided to focus on the steps I could take to make sure someone else could ‘keep the lights on’ for me in an emergency that I was going to come back from.

You may think - “but there’s nothing that can be done, without me the business just can’t operate.”

However we believe there is always something that can be done, with just a little bit of forward planning.

This is where ICE Vault comes in. 

We have developed a unique system to help businesses put an actionable plan in place quickly, allowing you to get back to your day to day running while knowing you have a plan in place should something happen. 

To find out more, please enter your details below and we will send you further information and some helpful hints on what you CAN do to prepare for an emergency. 

We have also created a 2 page guide to setting up your own ICE Plan which we will send you!