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Business continuity management is a key term to describe how to maintain business operations and keep on delivering services to customers even if there is a catastrophic error behind the scenes. Here, we’re going to talk about what this key term means, and how you can ensure your business is prepared for any number of scenarios.
What is business continuity?
Business continuity is a fairly simple concept: it’s a manner of ensuring that your business is robust enough to continue working even after an unfortunate incident that may damage your services, data, and applications.
Therefore, business continuity management (BCM) is the process of assessing any issues that may arise and cause trouble for your business. After this assessment, a business continuity plan should be drawn up. This will ensure that not only can you continue to operate and offer your services, but you can do that well and maintain great UX throughout the recovery process.
Small-scale incident examples
Utilities Outage
A utility outage is often the most likely incident that a business may encounter: a power, internet, or water failure, for example. For this incident, BCM might suggest that you invest in a backup generator, bottled water, and a temporary secondary internet connection.
Physical Incident
In some parts of the world, a physical incident such as flooding or sinkholes is more likely than in others. BCM forecasting would involve looking into what is likely in your local area, and making the appropriate accommodations. This research can be particularly vital, as a physical incident is liable to potentially lead to danger for your staff.
Large-scale incident examples
Cyber Attack
Cyber attacks are a concern for many businesses in our modern world, and protecting against them may include a BCM approach within your IT team. Considering backups and anti-malware software is vital to ensure smooth operation.
Supply Failure
Depending on the service or product that your business offers, this may be more or less applicable to you. Regardless, it can certainly be a concerning issue, worth considering even if you sell digital goods.
For example, a BCM mindset would ensure that there is a way for customers to purchase and manage your digital goods even in the event of an internet connection issue.
How to ensure business continuity for your organization?
Planning for a number of occasions is a vital way to ensure that business continuity is ensured for your business. Ideally, you should work with a BCM specialist to ensure that you draw up robust, functional incident responses for a range of situations
It’s also worth revisiting these incident response plans routinely, to ensure that they’re still actionable. For example, opening a plan only to find that the first step is to call a now-closed business would not be ideal. Avoid this through thorough and efficient revisiting of your plans.
Business continuity management is a vital way to ensure that you continue to do what you do best even in a catastrophic situation. Work with BCM in mind to ensure that UX is maintained and you can continue to work effectively no matter what happens.
