Rate Your Business Resilience: The 10-Point Self-Assessment

Why Most Businesses Think They Are More Resilient Than They Are#

Ask a typical small business owner how resilient their business is, and they will give you a number somewhere between "pretty good" and "solid." Ask them whether they have 60 days of cash reserves, a documented supplier backup plan, a tested data backup, key-person insurance, and a written business continuity plan, and the numbers change dramatically. A 2023 survey by Lloyds Bank found that while 78% of UK SMB owners described themselves as "somewhat" or "well" prepared for business disruption, only 23% had documented contingency plans, 31% had more than 30 days of liquid reserves, and 19% had tested their IT recovery systems in the previous 12 months. The gap between perceived and actual resilience is not dishonesty — it is the natural tendency to confuse trading well in normal conditions with being prepared for abnormal ones. A business that has never faced a major disruption has no lived experience of where its vulnerabilities lie. The self-assessment is designed to create that visibility through analysis rather than experience. AskBiz provides the data layer for this assessment — your cash position, inventory levels, customer concentration, cost structure, and supplier dependencies are all visible in the platform, giving you specific numbers rather than impressions for each dimension of resilience.

Dimension 1: Cash and Financial Resilience (0-20 points)#

Cash is the oxygen of business resilience. Without it, every other resilience measure fails eventually. Score yourself on each question (0 = no/never, 1 = partially/sometimes, 2 = yes/always): Question 1: Do you have at least 45 days of operating costs in liquid, immediately accessible cash? (Many advisors recommend 90 days; 45 is the minimum viable threshold.) Score 0–2. Question 2: Do you know your current monthly burn rate — total fixed costs regardless of revenue — without having to calculate it? Score 0–2. Question 3: Do you have at least one pre-arranged credit facility (overdraft, revolving credit, or invoice financing) that you could draw on within 24 hours? Score 0–2. Question 4: Is your business profitable at 70% of its current revenue — meaning a 30% revenue fall would not push it into a loss-making position? Score 0–2. Question 5: Do you have a 90-day cash flow forecast that is updated at least monthly and reviewed against actual performance? Score 0–2. Maximum score in this dimension: 10 points. Benchmark: Businesses scoring 8–10 are financially resilient. Businesses scoring 4–7 are moderately resilient with identifiable gaps. Businesses scoring 0–3 are financially fragile — a single adverse event could trigger a cash crisis. AskBiz provides live cash position, burn rate, and 90-day cash flow forecasting — directly supporting questions 2 and 5.

Dimensions 2–4: Operations, People, and Technology (0-30 points)#

Score each question 0–2 as above. Dimension 2: Operational Resilience (10 points possible) Do you have at least one secondary supplier for every product category representing more than 15% of your cost of goods? (2 points) Do you hold buffer stock equivalent to at least your primary supplier's lead time for your top 10 best-selling products? (2 points) Do you have documented emergency sourcing protocols — a written list of alternative suppliers, cash-and-carry contacts, and online sourcing options — for your most critical product categories? (2 points) Does your business have a documented response plan for loss of your primary trading premises? (2 points) Is your most critical supplier's financial health monitored at least annually? (2 points) Dimension 3: People Resilience (10 points possible) Is there at least one other person in your business who can perform each of your own most critical functions for at least two weeks? (2 points) Does that person have current access to all systems and accounts they would need? (2 points) Do you have key-person insurance covering yourself and any other business-critical individuals? (2 points) Is your most critical operational knowledge documented in written processes accessible to your team? (2 points) Do you have a staff retention strategy that reduces your risk of sudden mass departure? (2 points) Dimension 4: Technology Resilience (10 points possible) Do you have at least one isolated, off-site backup of all critical business data, updated within the last 24 hours? (2 points) Have you tested a data restore from that backup in the last 6 months? (2 points) Are your most critical business systems cloud-based, accessible from any device? (2 points) Do you have multi-factor authentication enabled on all systems with financial or customer data? (2 points) Do you have cyber insurance covering your business? (2 points)

Dimensions 5–6: Risk Management and Insurance (0-20 points)#

Dimension 5: Insurance Resilience (10 points possible) Does your business interruption insurance have an indemnity period of at least 24 months? (2 points) Is your stock insured at current replacement cost, not historic purchase cost? (2 points) Do you have cyber liability insurance as a separate policy or explicit endorsement? (2 points) Have you reviewed all your insurance policies with your broker in the last 12 months? (2 points) Do you hold employers' liability insurance at legally required limits (UK: minimum £5 million)? (2 points) Dimension 6: Strategic Risk Management (10 points possible) Does any single customer represent less than 20% of your annual revenue? (2 points) Does any single sales channel or platform represent less than 40% of your annual revenue? (2 points) Have you conducted a formal business risk assessment in the last 12 months? (2 points) Do you have a documented and tested business continuity plan? (2 points) Do you track your business resilience metrics (cash runway, supplier concentration, customer concentration) at least monthly? (2 points) Dimension 6 maximum: 10 points. AskBiz supports risk monitoring across all strategic dimensions — customer concentration analytics, supplier spend tracking, cash runway monitoring, and channel performance reporting are all built into the platform.

Your Resilience Score and What to Do With It#

Add up your scores across all six dimensions. Maximum total: 50 points. 40–50: High Resilience. Your business is well-prepared for a wide range of disruption scenarios. Focus on maintaining what you have built and identifying the one or two remaining gaps in your highest-scoring dimension. 28–39: Moderate Resilience. You have meaningful protections in place but identifiable vulnerabilities. Review your lowest-scoring dimensions and create a 90-day improvement plan targeting the specific questions where you scored 0. 15–27: Low Resilience. Your business has significant resilience gaps that could be exploited by a single adverse event. Prioritise the financial resilience dimension first — cash runway is the most universal crisis requirement — then work through operational and technology resilience systematically. 0–14: Fragile. Your business is exposed across multiple dimensions. An adverse event in any single area — cash, operations, technology, or people — could have severe consequences. Start immediately with the three highest-impact actions: build 30 days of cash reserves, establish at least one isolated data backup, and document your most critical processes. For every question where you scored 0, there is a specific article in this series that addresses the issue in depth — from cash flow emergency planning to supplier resilience, cyber security, and key-person dependency. AskBiz gives you the real-time financial and operational visibility to monitor your resilience metrics continuously — not just when you do this assessment, but every day. Your cash position, inventory health, customer concentration, and supplier spend are all visible on your AskBiz dashboard, giving you the data foundation for true business resilience. AskBiz gives you the visibility to act before it is too late. Try free at askbiz.co.

• Most SMB owners overestimate their business resilience.
• This 10-point self-assessment gives you an honest, scored view of your resilience across cash, operations, people, technology, and risk management — with specific actions for every gap you identify.