aspdaddy - 10:59 am on Jun 24, 2010 (gmt 0)

As a buyer if I choose to use a small company I want to know that I'm not going to be held hostage - for whaetever reason, so anything that makes it easy to change suppliers will help.

Deliver master copies on a CD, document what you have done, use standards, get into knowledge transfer.

The risk assessment / backup plan is good to do, but any single points of failure in a business/system are usually very expensive to solve or the contingency is not any good in reality. You should do this primarily to protect your business not clients e.g external backups, USB Modem, Spare Laptop, Key contacts all on Linkedin, Insurance, Roaming SIM, Experts Exchange Account etc.

If you have good underpinning contacts then a lot of the technical risk is removed.

Perhaps the simplest path is to grow your business up to the point where you require a partner/apprentice/employee

Then you start to forget how it all works they hold you hostage!