Getting your organization to recognise the value of business continuity is sometimes hard. However, business continuity plan best practice isn’t only a matter of what you put into your plan, but also what you do with it afterwards. You already need to show it to your management, the board, departmental heads affected, and others in your organisation, and legitimately blow your BC trumpet about the benefits. There is also another group of people who should know about your plan.
Your customers should be interested in knowing what your organisation has up its sleeve to makes sure it can keep on going in the face of adversity. In fact, the more money a customer is willing to spend with you, the more that customer is likely to want to know about your BC planning. While you can always make specific presentations to important accounts, it’s also business continuity plan best practice to leverage the communications channels already in place, such as public relations and the press. Consult your marketing colleagues as well. They might find your BC plan just the thing to underline the credibility and reliability of products and services they want to advertise to the market.
The content of your BC plan should provide good material for your public relations department to work with. It already has to answer the what, why, how, who, when and where questions so dear to any journalist’s heart. If your public relations people don’t immediately “get it”, this might be an opportunity for you to revise or reformulate your plan to make the benefits clearer, both for the organisation and for the customers it serves. Testing clarity and pertinence like this ahead of time is a part of business continuity plan best practice that can be invaluable as preparation for the moment when it comes to the crunch.