FSN: Could your business have survived Europe’s biggest fire?

Could your business have survived Europe 's biggest fire?

6th February 2006
In the wake of the devastating Buncefield oil depot fire in Hemel Hempstead, VersionOne, a leading supplier of document management and imaging solutions has researched the views of Financial Directors from 100 UK organisations. The purpose of the research was to discover whether their businesses could survive the total destruction of all hard-copy business documents such as invoices, purchase orders, statements, payroll, and despatch notes.

30% of Financial Directors surveyed said that they would NEVER recover if their paper business documents were destroyed by a fire, flood, terrorist attack etc. 32% of organisations would take a minimum of 12 months to recover and the remaining 38% would take approximately 6 months to recover. This is despite 60% of organisations claiming to have business continuity plans in place!

The financial cost of all business documents ‘going up in smoke' is also significant. All organisations would incur some financial cost with 45% incurring at least £50,000. 32% of organisations would incur between £100,000 and £800,000 and 15% would have financial costs of more than £1 million!

Key concerns by organisations (if all paper documents were destroyed) include “critical documents would be lost forever”, “there would be legal and VAT implications” and “the business would lose SOX compliance”. In addition, some organisations state that the destruction of all hard-copy documents would “Cause the business to go under”, “Be catastrophic”, “Result in redundancies” and “Make it virtually impossible to chase debt”

“This highlights the complete absence of measures organisations are taking to ensure business continuity”, says Tony Bray, director of document management and imaging company, Version One. “Many organisations think disasters such as the devastating fire at Buncefield just won't happen to them.

In a recent article, Digby Jones, director general of the Confederation of British Industry, expressed similar concerns about the lack of business continuity plans at the Buncefield oil depot and neighbouring companies, "Evidence suggests that not as many companies had computer back-ups and other financial records stored off-site, as they should."

Bray says, “ The only way organisations can ensure all business documents are protected in the event of a fire or flood, is by electronically storing all documentation from invoices and purchase orders through to despatch notes and technical drawings as well as keeping back-up copies off-site. Not only is electronically storing all incoming and outgoing documents common sense from a business continuity point of view, it also saves significant amounts of time, money and storage space.”

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