Disasters, whether natural or man-made and the associated risks lurch around the corner, waiting to strike when you expect them the least. And while there is very little (if anything at all) that you can do to stop such unexpected events, there is one thing you can do to ensure business doesn’t stop as a result.
So what’s that one thing? It’s planning and creating a comprehensive business continuity plan. But first, here are three things you need to know:
1 – Business continuity and disaster recovery are not the same
Business continuity is more about recovering IT and related equipment, data and resources while disaster recovery is about enabling your entire business to recover promptly from any kind of setback.
2 – Business continuity involves your entire staff
Business continuity is an overall business concern. You need to involve the entirety of your organization – every single department and every single employee, in creating a thorough and effective business plan. Why go to go much trouble? The reason is simple; the survival of your brand, business and organization is at stake.
3 – Business continuity can be easier than you think
At the heart of every business continuity plan is a set of activities to help different business units or organizational departments understand how to operate to continue service delivery till things get back to normal. Here are seven broad steps, which you can use as framework for your business continuity plan:
- Creating a plan for the impact of unexpected crises
- Preparing (and updating when need be) list of employees (department-wise) and their contact information
- Reviewing all department business functions or processes to determine the ones that are mission critical. Identifying priorities of different functions and processes and creating a plan of action.
- Reviewing IT and data needs and priorities, determining vulnerabilities and creating a plan of action in the event of a crisis, disruption or interruption.
- Develop the business continuity plan
- Communicating the plan to the management, employees and partners – it is a good idea to share paper or electronic copies of the plan with appropriate people
- Coordinating with external departments and units
- Making test runs of the plan
- Review, maintain and update the plan periodically
- Tweak each step to suit the needs and demands of your business in particular
To find out how KeeFORCE can be a key component of both your business continuity and disaster recovery plans, give us a call at (270) 366-0553.
