The recent outbreak of the Coronavirus has once again highlighted the importance of Business Continuity Plans. Emergencies such as this call out the need for an effective business plan for businesses-big or small. The ability to survive a disaster is reflective of a business’ resilience and its dependability among customers. An effective disaster management strategy requires an efficient Business Continuity Plan.
What is a Business Continuity Plan?
Business Continuity Plans facilitate the identification and recovery of critical business functions in disaster scenarios. They assess and ensure business continuity by providing preventive and corrective measures for the most critical aspects of business. Disasters, natural or man-made, could include a wide range of calamities that might affect the infrastructure, property, IT setup, or human resources of a business. Having a continuity plan in place can help recover critical aspects of a business while minimizing loss.
What should a Business Continuity Plan include?
An effective business continuity plan should include recovery management strategies for short- as well as long-term business disruptions. It should clearly outline the assets and the priority areas of a business. A comprehensive business continuity plan for an IT firm could, for instance, include strategies for Data Backup, Emergency Transport, Power Protection, General IT Support, Facilities Management, Online Backup, Emergency Notification, Data Privacy, VPN Establishment etc.
Risk Assessment and Business Impact Analysis are two other critical aspects of a continuity plan. Risk Assessment and Business Impact Analysis help identify unexpected loss of critical business areas and the impact of such a loss in terms of cost to business. Such assessment can also help businesses keep ready an action plan that precisely defines which operations may be outsourced or shut down without impacting the business severely.
Why is Business Continuity Planning important?
The resilience of a business setup is key to its beating competition. All businesses try to remain competitive, but the strongest indicator of the strength of a business is how quickly it recovers in the face of an emergency. Maintaining a strong customer-base is not easy. Maintaining a reputation among the existing and potential customers depends on how efficiently a business can handle emergencies. The more resilient a business, the more confidence it commands among the customers.
Why is it important to regularly review and update your Business Continuity Plan
It is never enough to frame a business continuity plan and, after sample runs and tests, letting it sit. Technology, Nature and people are evolving constantly and a continuity plan created keeping in mind the current circumstances might not work in future. It is important to decide on a few key personnel and hold regular meetings - maybe twice or thrice annually- to review the plan and discuss the areas that need to be modified and the suggested modifications. Sharing the planning process with managers at various levels helps update the plan keeping in mind various perspectives and prepares the business to face any emergencies. A business continuity plan can be made effective with inputs from the heads of all divisions of a business.
We are here to help!
Evon Technologies understands the need for business continuity plans, especially for IT firms. Being a technology leader itself, Evon recognizes the costs involved in technology firms and how the lack of preventive strategies can potentially damage an entire (usually very expensive) setup! To help you build an effective disaster prevention, management, and recovery strategy, we have built a business continuity plan template for you. The template can be downloaded and customized to your business operations. We are with you!
Download or copy the template to your document before going ahead! Find it here.
