If your strategic roadmap doesn’t have a backup plan, start here!
Whether you’re a CEO, special districts leader, decision maker, or IT professional, business continuity is relevant to you. When operations are interrupted, everyone in the company is affected in some way—and the cost of just a few hours of downtime can be devastating. These days, having plans for “what-happens-when” is a necessary portion of any organization’s strategic roadmap.
But what is business continuity? Business continuity plans (BCP) prompt you to imagine worst-case scenarios—things you might rather not think about—and how your organization would need to respond to keep damages low, ensure customer and employee impact is minimal, and remediate quickly.
The scenarios themselves might differ greatly depending on what your industry or organization touches.
For example, a water district’s BCP should address scenarios like fire or earthquake damage to critical infrastructure. Think about it—a wildfire could mean needing backup power for water treatment plants and pumping stations. They would also need ways to communicate with the public about water safety and service restoration, all while getting back up and running as soon as possible..
For municipalities, the most pressing problem to plan for might be technology failures. For example, imagine a central 911 dispatch system goes offline due to a technical issue. A BCP would help quickly activate alternate communication systems—such as radio dispatch or backup centers—and keep police, fire, and EMS coordinated during outages.
When developing a business continuity plan for your organization, consider the vulnerabilities most salient to your business.
1. Understand What Can Disrupt Your Business
- Natural disasters
- Hardware failure
- Cyber incidents
- Sudden changes to the market
As you identify potential weaknesses in your company, you can begin to plan for worst-case scenarios and develop a robust defensive strategy.
2. Brutally Evaluate Potential Costs
When operations are down, customers can’t make purchases, run print jobs, book appointments, or access their accounts. Downtime can also have chain-reaction effects down the task line. Think about the potential number of employees affected by the issue, loss of productivity, your day-to-day overhead costs, and add it all up for every hour of downtime.
Estimating the financial ramifications of business downtime means you can be more informed when building an IT and disaster recovery budget.
3. Plan for Recovery
The top way you can ensure business continuity is to plan ahead. A business continuity plan for your enterprise might include a Backup and Disaster Recovery Plan, maintenance schedules, and managed services so you can focus on building your business in real-time.
4. Practice—Even Just Once
Like a school fire drill, practicing what you’d do during an emergency or downtime will train your team to be more capable in the face of a true emergency. Even better: Implement regular training to make things run even smoother!
Know you need to update your business continuity approach, but not sure where to begin? Get in touch, and we’ll help kick things off.
