How to safeguard your business and ensure continuity

In an election year, political risk is expected to be high, especially for small-scale businesses.

It is thus imperative for entrepreneurs to protect their businesses accordingly to ensure continuity. Business protection refers to the steps taken to safeguard assets, ideas, information, names, market niche and processes.

As the definition suggests, there are many ways of doing this.

First, key business information must remain confidential.

This may include business plans, sales reports, client database among others. This is the kind of information the competition can use against you or can be used against you in a court of law involving flimsy charges. To protect information, the business should have well-known confidentiality policies, agreed to and signed by all players. This will minimise careless proliferation of company information.

Furthermore, there should be stringent measures on the business ICT. This might include a firewall, frequent password change and restricted access to the server. Failure to do this may result in your company being in the list of the 100 companies attacked by the Indonesian hacker!

Insurance a key component

Secondly, the risks around the business should be well managed. Insurance will thus become a key component of the business protection framework.

Unless you are a prophet, you cannot tell what tomorrow holds hence the need to prepare for any eventuality. While insurance has been an unpopular subject in the past, it cannot be ignored any more given the number of fires, accidents and legal suits in businesses today.

The business may also have unique ideas, inventions and innovations. This is what is referred to as intellectual property.

You may have heard of cases where individual discoverers were never credited for their work because someone else stole the ideas and registered them in their names. A good example is the kiondo which has its origins in Kenya, but is patented by China. Keep a lid on ideas, register ideas and get patents for your innovations.

In addition, the business or product names and brand are also susceptible to use by others. They can be registered as trademarks with the AG’s chambers.

The biggest challenge to business protection is trying to protect one’s position in the market.

The rule of thumb to stay atop is to keep doing what got you did to get there in the first place. Keep the service excellent, the marketing budget up and be in touch with market needs. A business is like an individual of its own, but it needs you to be safe.

Mr Odhiambo is the managing consultant of Elim Consulting. Email: wodhiambo@elim-consult.com