Your business faces all sorts of threats that can disrupt your operation. A comprehensive continuity plan can help address them.
“Business as usual” is easy when nothing out of the ordinary is happening. The fact is though, that a crisis can strike at any time. And when it does happen, you need to be prepared ahead of time to pivot your operation quickly, safely, and efficiently.
Which is where a well-thought-out business continuity plan comes into play.
It prepares you for the worst, such as market crashes and governments shutting down entire countries. And in these cases, your plan allows you to embrace remote work, enabling you to keep functioning and servicing your clients. It also lets you support your team at home and make them feel comfortable through various predicaments.
These are just some of the key benefits that a business continuity plan can bring to your business. This article will delve deeper into its significance and give you the foundation for creating one for your company.
WHY YOUR BUSINESS NEEDS A CONTINUITY PLAN
A business continuity plan details a process that your company should take to neutralise and recover from various threats to it. It can also help protect your business assets and staff during disasters, allowing them to function with minimal disruption.
Business continuity plans are usually developed as part of a company’s overall risk management. This means you should consider creating this plan ahead of time, not in the middle of a crisis.
The most significant benefit of creating a business continuity plan is that it provides a clear picture of how to proceed should a threat eventuate. It also tells you how that threat can impact your operation and how to mitigate it. Furthermore, it helps you check if the systems work and are up to date.
Another tremendous advantage of having a continuity plan is its ability to ensure secure and continued access to your systems. It dictates how your team and IT service provider can access critical technology platforms and services, available network bandwidth and whether you need to boost network capacity.
The overall effect is typically a reduced risk of losing your business and team members.
It can safeguard against financial loss, loss of productivity, and a damaged reputation. On top of that, it helps protect your employees from injuries or death in case of physical threats such as fire or flood.
But what specific threats can you address with a continuity plan?
Here’s a quick list:
THREAT #1. PANDEMICS
As we are well aware now thanks to COVID, pandemics can affect businesses in numerous ways.
For example, they can force your employees to work from home, increasing demand for some services (eg remote access), and reducing demand for others such as replenishing the all-important office water cooler ; ) Moreover, they can prevent you from distributing your offerings due to supply chain problems.
A business continuity plan can help you overcome such bumpy periods.
It formulates how your team will communicate throughout the difficult times and perform business off-site. And it can also provide several options in terms of service distribution.
THREAT #2. NATURAL DISASTERS
Natural disasters are extreme geographic phenomena, including cyclones, tsunamis, floods, bushfires, and earthquakes. They’re tricky because they’re hard to predict and can leave disastrous consequences within seconds.
Like global pandemics, they can disrupt the supply chain in affected areas, which is why you need a business continuity plan.
THREAT #3. UTILITY OUTAGES
Water shutoffs and loss of communication lines or power can hinder your day-to-day operation. It’s especially true if such outages are long-lasting.
Without a continuity plan, the risk of asset damage and productivity loss is drastically higher.
THREAT #4. CYBERSECURITY
Cyberattacks are computer-based attacks on your business technology. The most common examples include data theft, ransomware, distributed denial of service (DDoS), and operating system exploits.
In the best-case scenario, your infrastructure will continue to function – albeit less efficiently – until you resolve the issue. But in the worst-case scenario, you could lose access to business systems and/or data completely.
CREATE THE BEST CONTINUITY PLAN FOR YOUR BUSINESS
Developing a foolproof continuity plan requires a systematic approach. Here’s what your strategy should involve:
#1. IDENTIFYING GOALS
Business continuity doesn’t just comprise your IT systems. It encompasses all essential business functions, like public relations, human resources, and operations.
Since your company is unique, you’ll need to create a plan that is unique to it. One that has your specific organisational goals in mind.
So, determine your most important business processes and figure out how to back them up with recovery strategies.
#2. SETTING UP AN EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS GROUP
Make several cross-functional managers members of this group along with anyone else who can contribute to the plan, such as your IT service provider.
Determine the emergency response leader and make it clear they’re in charge of moving things forward when disaster strikes.
#3. BUSINESS IMPACT ANALYSIS AND RISK ASSESSMENT
Identify, research, and analyse your potential threats thoroughly. Discuss them with your team and see what would happen if you had to reduce, eliminate, or modify certain services.
Make sure to document all issues along the way.
#4. FOCUSING ON CUSTOMER SERVICE
Your clients need empathy and transparency during crises. And the only way to meet their expectations in trying times is to ensure your customer support team understands your continuity plan.
Give consideration in your plan to hiring more people to answer customer enquiries.
#5. ADDRESSING BUSINESS FUNCTION
Your plan should incorporate critical business functions. These include business risk, impact on customers and employees, emergency policy creating, external organisations, and financial resources during disasters.
This is vital to ensure business operations are “continuous” or at least functioning asap after a disaster.
#6. STAFF TRAINING AND PLAN UPDATES
Present your continuity plan to business stakeholders and promote a proactive approach through trial runs to verify the plan works. This way, you can pinpoint any weaknesses or missing aspects. Then, based on your findings and feedback, train your staff to make the implementation smoother.
Repeat this process to capture changes to your business over time and update the continuity plan with them.
Following this tactic doesn’t leave much room for error when the “you-know-what” hits the fan.
Besides helping you maintain business operations and the supply chain, it also builds customer confidence. If your response to emergencies is effective, your customers will appreciate it. This allows you to preserve your brand, prevail over your competition, and mitigate financial loss.
DON’T LET CRISES CRIPPLE YOUR BUSINESS
Disasters can be the ultimate test of your leadership abilities.
That’s why instead of leaving your company’s disaster response to chance, create an in-depth business continuity plan before such emergencies arise. Make sure everyone is on the same page, and you’ll come out stronger on the other side of any predicament.
If you need more insights into developing a continuity plan, get in touch with us today. We’re happy to schedule a 10-15 minute chat to discuss your continuity goals and how we can help you to achieve them.
Article used with permission from The Technology Press.
Main Photo by Jonathan Ford on Unsplash
Article Photo by Daria Nepriakhina on Unsplash