Are you prepared for an emergency?
Business Continuity
An ongoing process to ensure that the necessary steps are taken to identify the impact of potential losses and maintain viable recovery strategies, recovery plans, and continuity of services. (NFPA 1600)
Business Continuity has grown in popularity as businesses understand the benefit of protecting their future. Business Continuity is simply planning how your company will survive when the worst happens. Developing emergency plans requires a team, full understanding of your business, planning for improvements, educating your employees, and testing. It is time consuming. However the alternative is: 70% of businesses involved in a major fire either do not reopen or subsequently fail within 3 years and 1 out of 2 businesses never return to the marketplace following a major disaster (Chubb.com Oct 3, 2008))
Disaster Recovery is often confused with Business Continuity when in fact, Disaster Recovery is part of a Business Continuity Plan. Disaster Recovery plans are based around your data network and recovering data. Recent disasters have affected many unprepared businesses. It is dangerous to maintain the, “it won’t happen”, attitude. Natural disasters can happen anytime, even if your business is not directly affected your daily operations can be affected by power outages, limited internet access, inability to ship or receive, employees who cannot get to your facility, etc.
Being a tenant in a multi-tenant facility also has its risks. Your business is vulnerable to the work practices of other businesses. If a careless employee breaks a sprinkler head on a floor above you, how long will the water run? If another tenant has a major fire, what will happen to your business?
Would your business survive?
If you cannot access your business, can you continue to work? Do you know which part of your data network needs to be online first? It is not realistic to expect to have everything back up and running quickly. How will you take orders, run payroll, process accounts payables, etc. Once your systems are running will you be using data saved at the time of the outage or the data from your last back-up hours earlier?
Getting started begins with commitment. The Senior Management Team has to commit and support the development and implementation of the business continuity plans. Having an executive level sponsor will support, endorse, and help your efforts. Financial commitment is important for building redundancy in your data network, replacing computers with laptops, real time back-up systems, employee training, and testing the plans with exercises.
Business continuity planning provides guidance for ensuring the ability of your personnel to respond, resume, and restore to a pre-determined level of operation following a disruption. Keeping in mind that business continuity planning costs are most often related to personnel resource (or a consulting resource) rather than an infrastructure investment, the return on investment can be positive. If you consider the potential financial impact of damage to your reputation, the return on investment in business continuity planning is almost immediate. Just ask Chipotle what a damaged reputation can do to your business. Business continuity planning makes financial sense and should be incorporated in to every business, regardless of size or operation.
