Choosing an operational plan to maintain essential business operations in a disaster is called business continuity (BC) strategy development.
It helps businesses become agile enough to pivot when sudden incidents happen.
The customers also evaluate the capabilities of a business by the way it operates when a disaster strikes.
While it’s unusual for two businesses to work with the same approach, they can have the same business continuity strategy.
This article will put a spotlight on the elements of an effective business continuity management strategy.
What Does a Good Business Continuity Workaround Strategy Look Like?
The business continuity strategy includes developing, choosing, and using techniques to lessen the effects of a disaster and respond to incidents.
The strategies you establish must support each following phase of the disaster lifecycle: response, recovery, resumption, restoration, and return.
These phases of business continuity allow the company to fulfill its goals and objectives.
Every continuity of business strategy must:
- Be achievable
- Have a good chance of success
- Be valid through exercises
- Encourage prompt action and the restart of activities
- Attain recovery service goals
- Suit the budget
Read more: How To Create A Business Continuity Plan: A Beginner’s Guide
Example of a Good Business Continuity Strategy
The business continuity strategy is based on the business impact analysis’s findings, typically used to identify and measure risks to an organization’s operations.
Companies can develop appropriate recovery plans to resume important functions.
Mostly, recovery plans are for operations that substantially influence the company.
For a particular plan, one can create different strategies to deal with variations, including:
- Possible length of the outage or its nature
- The economic cycle during which the disaster takes place
- Existence of resources
For an effective business continuity strategy, take the example of the incident management solution of a telecom company.
Suppose the official of a company learns that a hazardous fire is approaching an important facility of a company.
That part of the building is a primary switching center with critical telecom wire and equipment required to serve countless people.
How will a company save itself with a business continuity strategy in this scenario?
There should be incident management teams to restore the functions and tackle the disaster.
The company can use a system that reports to the staff about the fire and assesses the incident’s effects.
In this way, the incident management response teams will automatically be activated.
The employees can receive emergency alerts through the company’s management system.
Even if the switching center shuts down because of the fire, with a powerful network, the company can restore the service again quickly.
Now, let’s move on to the elements essential for an effective business continuity strategy.
5 Elements of a Solid Business Continuity Strategy
For a business continuity strategy to help a business resume its operation after an unforeseen event, these are the main elements:
1. Evaluation of the Risks
Businesses have distinct risks to consider in the case of a disaster because they are all unique.
Before drafting a business continuity strategy, you should carefully evaluate the risks your company is most vulnerable to.
These are not the dangers that every company confronts.
For instance, this can include the kinds of harm a natural disaster, like a storm, flood, earthquake or tornado, may inflict on the company.
Consider the situations that would most interrupt a business and are most likely to occur.
Then, be sure that the business continuity strategy covers every risk.
The risks will vary based on the location and region of the business.
This is how the company will be equipped to handle those issues when they arise.
2. Building a Robust Technological Infrastructure
Risks are present everywhere in a business, so the business continuity strategy should have technological support.
The company will need to swiftly switch from office-based to remote operations when a calamity strikes.
That may involve using teleconferencing and video conferencing technologies to simulate the face-to-face interactions that promote business productivity.
Additionally, remote access to workstations allows employees to stay involved using tools and data during that phase.
Giving employees the necessary resources, such as document sharing and whiteboarding, helps teams work together.
3. Having a Power Outage BCP
Most accidental situations result in power outages for your company, often for an extended period of time.
If this happens, the company should have a backup strategy for electricity generation.
The business continuity strategy for power outages needs to include a few essential components listed below:
- A list of crucial programs and systems that must be kept running in the event of a power loss
- Potential sources of backup electricity, such as generators and batteries
- Protocols for customer communication, including important customer service professionals’ contact information
- Employee safety protocols
- A strategy for minimizing financial losses that include insurance and emergency funds
- Plan for restoring deleted files and data
Business Continuity Strategy Example
If you manage a physical store, you’ll need a plan outlining how to keep the doors open and the business running.
That can entail employing manual cash registers, battery-operated point-of-sale devices, or generators to restore power swiftly.
A consumer communication strategy should also be part of your plan, such as displaying notices around your shop or sending out email blasts to inform customers that you are still open for business.
4. Create Communication Channels
Strategic business continuity planning starts and ends with communication. All the employees must be addressed by a BCP.
Thus, they all need to be made aware of its presence.
All employees must have a fundamental grasp of their duties and responsibilities during a catastrophic occurrence, even while the amount of specificity and responsibility varies.
The company should share important information with its staff, clients, and other key stakeholders.
A sound crisis communications strategy should include thorough information on how internal notifications, such as those sent by email and messages, should be handled.
Also, the business continuity plan should include how staff members will be informed of the status of the disruption.
A plan should address how to deal with the media and what and how to communicate with clients and stakeholders outside of the office on the external side of the matter.
A company should have backup communication channels and redundancy systems in place in case of communication breakdowns.
5. Safety of the Sensitive Information
Over the past few years, data theft and breaches have increased, killing startups and crippling long-standing businesses.
Additionally, millions of dollars have been lost due to ransomware assaults. These painstakingly planned assaults have decimated numerous organizations.
So, if a crisis takes place, the company must have access to business-critical data to maintain operations.
Ensure that all of the critical data is cloud-backed up.
To protect the data, employees can use services like Dropbox or Google Drive.
Your company could be destroyed if you don’t have adequate data security measures or recovery plans.
The ensuing repercussions, such as harm to your reputation and a loss of revenue, can ultimately lead to the closure of your company.
Importance of Business Continuity Services
As you already know, a business continuity strategy puts your company in a position to withstand serious disruption.
It removes the uncertainty surrounding every calamity and offers a clear guide for what everyone should do.
When a company opts for business continuity services, it gets the following benefits:
- Streamlines interaction between staff and customers
- Keeps data and information secure
- Finds weaknesses in the backup and recovery procedures.
- Creates technological strategy specifically for your company.
- Devises effective solutions for operations
- Helps with documentation
- Provides support for network management
Business continuity services are responsible for managing and monitoring your data infrastructure.
They can help companies have greater dependability, lower risk, and get a thorough business continuity plan in an emergency.
FAQs
How does a business continuity strategy work?
Creating business continuity plans (BCP) is required to manage and defend against identified threats.
How is disaster recovery different from business continuity?
Disaster recovery focuses on recovering data access and IT infrastructure after a disaster.
On the other hand, business continuity focuses on keeping operations running throughout a disaster.
Which component is of utmost importance in a business continuity strategy?
Identification of the risk factor. Without it, no one can manage the risk.
What is the best approach for a business continuity strategy?
The main driver for making the strategy should be the recovery requirements obtained by data. Also, the constraints experienced by the business.
To Sum It Up
For small, mid-sized, and large businesses, an effective business continuity strategy is essential.
Q4 Gems can keep your company operational, profitable, and productive whenever it faces a challenge that comes without warning.
They have professionals who work closely with you to create a personalized business continuity strategy.
Their recovery plans are catered to your specific requirements, ensuring your company can continue running effectively.
