In every business, business continuity planning or business continuity management has many unknown importances that every business owner or investor must be aware of in order to prevent unknown disasters.
Business continuity planning enables critical services or products to be delivered to customers continuously. The business continuity program strives to ensure critical operations continue to be available, rather than focusing on recovering business after critical operations cease or recovery of disasters.
A well-built business continuity plan must include the following:
- Plans, measures and arrangements to ensure continuous delivery of critical services and products, which enable organizations to restore their facilities, data and assets.
- Identify the necessary resources to support business continuity, including personnel, information, equipment, financial allocation, legal counsel, infrastructure protection and accommodation.
Now, let’s look at the definition of a business continuity plan before discussing its importance and how it can benefit the company.
What is a Business Continuity Plan (BCP)?
Business Continuity Planning (BCP) is the process involved in creating a prevention system and recovering systems from potential threats to a company.
The program ensures that people and assets are protected and can operate quickly in the event of a disaster. BCP is usually considered in advance, involving the opinions of key stakeholders and personnel.
BCP involves defining any risks that may affect the operations of a company, making it an important part of an organization’s risk management strategy.
Risks may include natural disasters, fires, floods or weather-related events and cyber attacks.
Once the risk is identified, the plan should also include:
- Determine how these risks will affect operations
- Implement safeguards and procedures to mitigate risks
- Test the program to make sure they are effective
- Review the process to ensure it is up to date
BCP is an important part of any business. Threats and interference mean losing revenue and higher costs, resulting in a decline in profitability. Businesses cannot rely solely on insurance, as it cannot cover all the fees and customers that participate in the competition.
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When trying to understand the importance of a business continuity plan, business owners or investors can have certain misunderstandings, including the following:
1: Our people will know what to do in an emergency
Even the best employees can’t count on what to do when a disaster strikes. Having everyone responds in their own way will only increase the confusion of the incident.
Create a well-documented business continuity plan ahead of time and train your staff to follow it so that everyone on the same page can help ensure an organized, safe and timely recovery.
2: We have insurance to pay for the losses
Insurance alone is not a business continuity strategy. Proper coverage is an important part of the plan. However, it may not fully cover certain peripheral damages in the event, such as customer losses, loss of market share, or setbacks in developing or releasing new products. Consult your insurance agent to see what is not covered in your policy.
3: We don’t have time to develop a business continuity plan
The time to develop and maintain a business continuity plan is an investment in your company. Whether you are willing to do business or not, your fixed fees will continue after the event.
The faster you can restore an operation to normal, the greater the chance of successfully recovering from events. With many dangers, your company cannot implement it without plans.
4: Business continuity and disaster recovery plan are the same
Business continuity is an active plan to avoid and mitigate risks associated with operational disruptions. It details the steps to be taken before, during and after the event to maintain the financial viability of the organization.
Disaster recovery is a reactive plan for response after an event occurs. It involves the security and recovery of key personnel, location and operational procedures after disasters and is part of the business continuity plan.
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How to develop a business continuity plan
Many companies have to take several steps to develop a solid BCP. They include:
- Business impact analysis: Here, the enterprise will determine time-sensitive functions and related resources. (More information about this below.)
- recover:
In this section, the business must identify and implement the steps to restore critical business functions. - organize: A continuity team must be created. The team will develop a plan to manage the interruption.
- train: Continuity teams must be trained and tested. Team members should also complete exercises to adhere to plans and strategies.
The importance of business continuity planning
Here are the basic importance of a business continuity plan. As we all know, every organization has the risk of possible disasters, including the following various disasters:
- Natural disasters such as tornadoes, floods, snowstorms, earthquakes and fires
- ACCIDENT
- destroy
- Electricity and energy destruction
- Communications, transportation, security and service sector failures
- Environmental disasters such as pollution and hazardous material spillage
- Cyberattacks and hacking activities.
Creating and maintaining a BCP helps ensure organizations have the resources and information they need to respond to these emergencies.
Things to do when interference occurs
Interference is handled in three steps:
- reply
- Continue key services
- Recover and restore
reply
Incident response involves deployment teams, plans, measures and arrangements. Complete the following tasks during the response phase:
- Event Management
- Communication Management
- operations management
Event Management
Incident management includes the following measures:
- Notify management, employees and other stakeholders;
- Take control of the situation;
- Determine the scope and scope of damage;
- Implementation plan;
- Identify infrastructure disruptions; and
- Coordinate support from internal and external sources.
Communication Management
Communications management is essential to control rumors, keep in touch with the media, emergency services and suppliers, and assurances to employees, the public and other affected stakeholders. Communication management requirements may require the establishment of redundancy to the communication system and the development of a communication plan to fully address all requirements.
operations management
Emergency Operations Center (EOC) can be used to manage operations in case of interruptions. Having a centralized EOC that coordinates, manages and records information and resources helps ensure effective, effective response.
continue
Ensure that the continuous delivery or undestruction of critical services or products that are time sensitive to all time is longer than allowed.
Recover and restore
The purpose of recovery and recovery operations is to restore, restore facilities or operations and maintain critical service or product delivery. Recovery and recovery include:
- Redeploy personnel
- Decide whether to repair facilities, relocate to alternative sites or create new facilities
- Get additional resources needed to resume business operations
- Re-establish normal operation
- Operation to restore interference levels
Summary/Conclusion
The importance of a business continuity plan is crucial for every business owner who wants to run a sustainable business to understand, because 25% of businesses will not reopen after a major event. Closing a business does not require a major disaster.
In fact, seemingly smaller interference can often cause significant damage compared to a wide range of natural disasters, such as power failures, water pipe ruptures, or loss of computer data.
When planning a disruption or catastrophic event, it should happen when the business is going well, not when the disaster strikes.
Having a scheduled, well-documented business continuity plan that clearly conveys your business’ response during the event can help reduce risks and is one of the best investments a company can make.
To be sure, after all this, you will agree with my consent that, in fact, business continuity plans have many importance, so I encourage every business owner, investor and all involved to take positive steps to protect their business.
Reference: Definition, Type and Importance of the Enterprise
