Business Continuity Planning: A must-have, Not a luxury
Business continuity planning is not an alien concept anymore. In recent times we have witnessed a lot of events that only serve to further intensify the need for business continuity planning. Examples include natural calamities like hurricanes, floods, wildfires, untoward events like terror attacks, or even pandemics like the recent Covid-19 outbreak. While a business continuity plan cannot completely safeguard your business from all these events, it can certainly minimize the damage inflicted on your business due to them. Top business consultants urge their clients to first develop a business continuity plan as they consider it a part of the best practices for running a business. A business continuity plan can make the difference between survival and shutdown of a business during a crisis situation.
What is Business Continuity Planning?
Business continuity planning is the process of creating a blueprint that helps your business respond and recover effectively from an unforeseen mishap. As discussed before, the unforeseen event could range from natural disasters to pandemics, or even accidents that affect just your place of business like a fire or even a cybercrime attack directed at your business in particular--basically, any event that can paralyze your business.
A business continuity plan serves as a step-by-step guide that you can follow during an emergency to keep your business running smoothly. True, a business continuity plan is not a sure shot method to survive a crisis, it won’t instantly eliminate the impact of the disaster, but it gives you the best chances of survival.
A Business Continuity Plan help you in the following ways in the event of a crisis:
It helps retain clients
As a business, if you have problems functioning, it will definitely affect your clients. For example, if your servers are down or your supply-chain mechanism is affected or your delivery process breaks, you won’t be able to fulfill your promise to your clients. Even worse, in some situations you may not even be in a position to communicate about the crisis to your clients, adding to their frustration. A business continuity plan addresses these issues beforehand and can help reduce client dissatisfaction.
Salvaging brand image and reputation
There are certain events that end up affecting only your business. For example, ransomware attacks, virus attacks, data leaks, etc. Having a business continuity plan that addresses such events can be a blessing in times of such crisis.
Minimizing revenue loss
A business continuity plan can minimize the revenue losses that occur as a result of a crisis that interrupts your business operations.
In short, a business continuity plan helps minimize the impact of the crisis on your client relations, your brand image, and your revenue by equipping you with a plan to handle the situation better.
What are the essentials of a Business Continuity Plan?
A list of your key