Don’t Let Crises Cripple You: Create a Business Continuity Plan

Why is a business continuity plan important?

Your business faces all sorts of threats that can disrupt your operations. Crisis can strike at any time, and when it happens you need to be ready to pivot your operations quickly, safely, and efficiently. That’s where a well-thought-out business continuity plan comes into play.

A business continuity plan prepares your organization and your team for the worst — things like a natural disaster, a ransomware incident, or a global pandemic. Your plan should allow your team to embrace remote work if needed and should enable you to keep functioning and servicing your clients, customers, or patients no matter what comes your way. It should also give your team peace of mind while at home and make them feel comfortable through various circumstances.

These are just some of the key benefits a business continuity plan can bring to your business during not only long-term crises, but short-term ones as well. Let’s dive into how to create a business continuity plan and how your Managed Service Provider (or MSP) plays a key part in this planning.

The Many Reasons Why You Need a Business Continuity Plan

A business continuity plan details the processes that your company should take to defuse and recover from different threats. It can also help protect your organization’s assets and personnel during disasters, allowing them to function uninterruptedly. This means you should consider creating this plan ahead of time, not in the middle of a crisis.

Creating a business continuity plan sooner rather than later provides a clear picture of how to navigate should your business encounter a threat or crisis. It predicts how those circumstances can impact your operations and what measures will need to be taken to help mitigate long-term effects.

Another significant advantage of having a plan is its ability to dictate how your team and IT service provider can reach critical platforms and the available bandwidth, and whether your current network capacity will suffice in such a crisis.

Here’s a quick list of a few specific threats you can address with a continuity plan:

Pandemics

As you well know by now, pandemics can affect your business plans in numerous ways.

For example, they can force your employees to work from home, changing the structure of demand for certain products and services. Moreover, they can prevent you from distributing your offerings due to supply chain problems and lack of in person project planning among employees.

Having a continuity plan in place will help you overcome these uncertain times by formulating how your team will communicate throughout the period and perform business off-site. And it can also provide several options in terms of service distribution.

Power and Internet Outages

Loss of power, water shutoffs, and even loss of communication can drastically hurt your daily operations. This is especially true if such outages are predicted to last long.

With a continuity plan, the risk of asset damage and productivity loss is drastically lower.

Cybersecurity

Cyberattacks are computer-based attacks on your technical assets. The most common examples include data theft, malware, ransomware, distributed denial of service, etc.

In the best-case scenario, your infrastructure will function less efficiently while you work to gain control of your network. But in the worst-case scenario, you could lose access to all business data and be out a significant amount of money trying to recover any data possible.

Develop the Best Continuity Plan for Your Business

Creating a foolproof business continuity plan requires a methodical approach. Here’s where to start creating this strategy:

Step 1: Identify Your Goals

Not only are your IT systems a high priority, all essential business functions — like public relations, human resources, and operations — are key parts in your business operating at its highest level.

Since your company is unique, you’ll need to create a plan according to your specific goals and expectations during a ground shifting predicament.

Once you have identified the highest priority operations it’s time to figure out how to back them up with the most effective recovery strategies.

Step 2:  Set Up an Emergency Preparedness Group

Choose several cross-functional managers, along with your IT service provider, to help map out and establish your continuity plan.

Determine who you would like to be in charge in the case an emergency arises and set clear expectations on what they will be responsible for when disaster strikes.  

Step 3: Business Impact Analysis and Risk Assessment

Identify, research, and analyze your potential threats meticulously during a short-term or long-term crisis. Discuss them with your team and see what would happen if you had to reduce, eliminate, or modify certain services being provided to your clients.

 Make sure to document all circumstances that may arise along the way.

Step 4: Focus on Customer Service

Keep in mind your clients may be facing the same crisis and they will be looking to you and your business for empathy and transparency to help ease their concerns. You have to make sure your customer support team is prepared and ready to react appropriately when called upon, so prepare them and make sure they also understand your continuity plan.

Step 5: Addressing Business Function

Your plan should incorporate critical business functions. These include business risk, impact on customers and employees, emergency policy creating, community partners or external organizations, and financial resources during disasters.

This is vital to ensure business operations are up and functioning ASAP, because we all know that time is money!

Step 6: Staff Training and Plan Updates

Present your continuity plan to shareholders and appropriate management to promote a proactive approach through trial runs to verify the plan works. The goal is to pinpoint any weaknesses or missing aspects that may have been overlooked. Then, based on your findings and feedback, train your staff to make the implementation smooth.

Besides helping you maintain business operations, it also builds customer confidence. If your response to emergencies is effective, prompt, and compassionate, your customers will appreciate it. This allows you to mitigate financial loss, preserve your brand, and prevail over your competition.

Be Proactive, Not Reactive

Disasters can be the ultimate test of your leadership abilities.

Instead of being reactive when disaster strikes, it’s imperative that you are proactive in creating an in-depth, comprehensive business continuity plan beforehand. Make sure everyone is on the same page, and you’ll be able to come out stronger after any predicament.

If you need more insights into developing a continuity plan, we implore you to get in touch with us today. Let’s set up a 10-15 minute chat to determine your goals and how to best achieve them.

Helping you think ahead, 

The EON Team