Annual Report: Small Business Resilience Index 2025

Resilience has become one of the most important qualities a small business can develop — but it’s also one of the least systematically measured. For the second year, we surveyed business owners across 10 dimensions of operational resilience to understand where small businesses are most vulnerable and what the highest-performing businesses do differently.

The 10 Resilience Dimensions

We measured: financial reserves, customer concentration, key person dependency, documented processes, technology reliability, supply chain redundancy, team capability depth, market diversification, communication systems, and crisis response planning.

Where Small Businesses Are Most Vulnerable

The lowest scores across respondents were in key person dependency (average score: 3.2/10) and documented processes (3.8/10). More than 60% of businesses surveyed identified a single person — usually the owner — whose absence would critically impair operations. Fewer than 20% had documented processes for more than half of their core functions.

What High-Resilience Businesses Do Differently

Businesses in the top resilience quartile shared five consistent characteristics: documented systems for all core processes, financial reserves of at least three months operating expenses, no single customer representing more than 20% of revenue, at least two people capable of handling each critical function, and a tested crisis communication plan.