Being ready for everything and anything is important. One of the problems we consistently come across is businesses facing major delays because they do not have a best practice approach to business continuity management. Increasing, many have poorly devised methodologies, lack value in their data quality management, are unable to meet deadlines and have poorly trained resources. When people think of business continuity they tend to think of huge catastrophic events war, floods, terrorism, the global financial crisis and so forth.
Organisations need not continue focusing on disasters of such severe nature but rather on small incidents which through adequate planning can be prevented. It is no longer adequate to place the spotlight on what one can do after an incident but rather to put attention on what happens prior, during and after. Much awareness has been placed on recovery. If adequate controls are put in place, then revival need not be an option.
Business Continuity helps your company save money every day of the year. Small mundane operations, if overlooked, can cause operational bottlenecks, becoming single points of failure. Decisions should be made through comprehensive planning as opposed to being managed ‘on the fly.’
People often believe that continuity planning requires a large capital outlay. No two companies are the same, each one having different processes and procedures. A flexible methodology should be malleable to organisations of all types. A business continuity plan drives down the extent of the impacts and operational losses. The aforementioned cannot operate without adequate communication and decisive project management skills.
For maintenance of organisational resilience, senior management need to press home the interests to staff, customers and those who are dependent on the organisation. Whilst companies are often quick to look at financial losses which accumulate as the result of an interruption, they rarely consider brand and reputation. Most people have the attitude that a disaster will never happen, however minor interruptions occur on a daily basis and often they are outside of an organisations control.
Higher degrees of competence are called for. Business Continuity needs to be looked at as an investment not a cost.