Four tips for protecting your assets as a small business

By Lizzie Weakley

Running a business is a huge responsibility. You need to provide your employees with a safe work environment, please customers, create a return for investors, and much more. One of these responsibilities includes protecting your company’s valuable assets. If you don’t, your business may not actually survive the hit it could take if a key asset is lost. Taking precautions and preparing for the worst is the best way to avoid disaster. With that in mind, below are four tips for protecting your small business’s assets.

Invest in strong cyber security

Today, not all the assets you need to protect are physical. Instead, many of your most important assets exist only in a digital format. This can include sensitive customer data, trade secrets, marketing data and much more. Protecting these digital assets is paramount. You could be targeted by hackers, malware, viruses and even more at any moment. Investing in cyber security and data back-up services is a must in today’s marketplace. In addition to setting up programs, you should train your employees to take proper precautions and teach them to recognize phishing schemes and report them to the proper place.

Keep your assets under surveillance

In other cases, you may have physical assets of significant value. In a retail store, this will include products. In a factory, it may include things like machinery, raw materials and finished goods. Whatever the case, these assets must be kept under surveillance. If not, you can bet on them being stolen by burglars, customers or even your own employees. Invest in a surveillance system as well as security guard services to keep your assets monitored.

Insure your assets

Make sure your important assets are insured. Investigate different business insurance coverage plans with different insurers. There is a lot that can go wrong when running a small business. If you own a retail store, for example, a flood could destroy most of what you have in stock. A fire could break out or a natural disaster could slow business for a long time. Proper insurance coverage could help make up for both the lost goods and the lost business.

Take steps to stop shrinkage

Shrinkage occurs when products or materials stored in inventory are lost or damaged beyond repair. There can be many causes of shrinkage. In certain cases, products may have spoiled or gone bad. In other cases, they may have been stolen by employees. Sometimes products that were supposed to be in inventory just become lost. Overall, you need to take steps to stop shrinkage. Keep your warehouses or other storage areas under the right conditions regarding temperature and humidity to protect your products. Implement an inventory control system so nothing goes unaccounted for.

Running a small business can be tough. There’s a lot to do. One thing you must do is take steps to protect your assets. If you don’t, you will surely end up regretting it. Your entire business could be put at risk. Don’t worry too much though. If you take the proper precautions, you can prevent disaster and help mitigate it when/if it strikes.

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Lizzie Weakley is a freelance writer from Columbus, Ohio. In her free time, she enjoys the outdoors and walks in the park with her husky, Snowball.

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