Business Continuity Management – Benefits, Phases, and Tools
Key takeaways
- Business continuity can be defined as the ability of business organizations to overcome and manage such unprecedented events affecting the flow of processes and resume the process flows.
- Business continuity management (BCM) includes holistic management processes that aid in identifying possible business threats and suggest measures to minimize their impact.
- Risk management through business continuity gives businesses an armor against interruption. In times of crisis, the business continuity navigates the downtime by saving up on time, costs, and the image of the company.
- BCM reduces the impact of downtime and helps the business acquire a faster recovery and spin back to the previous work momentum.
What is Business Continuity?
Running a business has its risks, most of which might not be in our control. These can be in the form of data breaches, natural calamities, or even cyber-attacks, most of which are unpredictable, turbulent, and difficult to take immediate action. This is where business continuity has got a role to play.
Business continuity can be defined as the ability of business organizations to overcome and manage such unprecedented events affecting the flow of processes and resume the process flows. This is generally done through a plan, which is a guide to resuscitate the business from the impact of a disruption.
Business continuity is a form of risk management that involves a plan to restore the business to normal. Disruption management is essential for any organization, be it business, public sector, charity, or non-profit. Having a plan to manage such interruption ensures a consistent service to your customers and offers a competitive edge.
Table of Contents
What is Business Continuity Management?
Business continuity management (BCM) includes holistic management processes that aid in identifying possible business threats and suggest measures to minimize their impact. As the meaning of business continuity management suggests, it is an important part of risk management in any organization. A business continuity management plan guides the top management to make necessary decisions.
What is a business continuity management plan? The business continuity plan (BCP) is a framework that helps organizations prevent, manage, and recover from business risks instantly. Developing a business continuity management plan ensures that the work is restored as soon as possible by addressing the issue.
The plan ensures minimal to zero loss of assets and personnel and switches to functional mode easily. Business continuity management is a crucial business operation and is an evolving process. These risks can be mitigated by implementing solutions like BCM software, or a BCM team that would initiate the recovery process.
Understanding Business Continuity Plans
A business continuity plan (BCP) would outline the possible risks and solutions in detail and is a core part of the business’s risk management strategy. These risks might include some external factors like natural disasters like fire, flood, storm, etc., pandemics, and even terrorist attacks. Apart from these, some internal risk factors might include –
Potential Incidents to Consider Internally
The incidents that might disrupt the organizational functioning can be categorized into the following three groups –
- Supply chain failure – This can occur due to not having access to raw materials, goods, or services.
- Utilities outage – This can occur when the organization does not have access to basic utilities like electricity, water, or the internet necessary to work.
- Cyber incident – This can occur when the business is cyber-attacked, resulting in systems or website shutdown.
Once these risks are identified, the plan must detail the following aspects –
- Ways to determine how the risks will impact business operations
- Implementing safeguarding measures to tackle complex risks
- Testing steps to ensure the safeguarding measures work
- Ensuring that the processes and compliance are updated to the latest version
Importance of Business Continuity and BC Plan
A disrupted work environment costs more than any other issue in the organization. Gartner reveals that the downtime caused by cyber-attacks is more complex to mitigate. This makes it important for businesses to have a business continuity management plan. The plan will allow businesses to stay on alert for any signs of potential threats that would lead to any downtime.
Risk management through business continuity helps businesses to have an armor against interruption. In times of crisis, the business continuity navigates the downtime by saving up on time, costs, and the image of the company. The plan allows the company to work at a lower degree when a risk occurs.
The continuity plan enables the organization to analyze the business first. Based on the inferred results, the weak areas are identified. The designated team gathers all the information regarding the weak areas. This is eventually supplemented by solutions to mitigate the issue when it occurs. The plan also details the technical aspects of systems through illustrative diagrams and emergency contact lists. This comprehensively guides the organization to build effective communication, technology, and resilience to unpredictable situations.
Benefits of Business Continuity Plan
Having a business continuity program is crucial for running successfully. The business continuity plan acts as a safeguarding strategy for any business that is prone to industrial, natural, or unpredictable risks. The business continuity plan offers the following benefits.
- Ready Contingency Plan – A contingency plan on how to tackle a particular risk with detailed steps.
- Process Analysis – Prediction of any future hazards based on the process analysis in case of an internal risk.
- Reduces the Impact of Downtime – Helps mitigate downtime by significantly reducing costs and time.
- Risk Management – Aids in improving risk management by offering alternative plans to resuscitate the downfall.
- Maintain Brand Image and Reputation – Helps maintain the brand image and reputation of the company even during a catastrophic time
- Fast Recovery – Allows the business to keep trading by tackling issues simultaneously and offers a faster recovery
- Customer Trust – Help nurture customer commitment and trust
How To Create a Business Continuity Plan?
Building a robust business continuity plan is ideal. Important considerations have to be made to generate a plan suitable for the organization and workforce. Here are the four main stages of creating a business continuity plan.
Business Impact Analysis
The purpose of this stage is to identify all the tasks and functions that are time-sensitive, and also the resources that are associated with them. This helps in determining the effects and impacts that will be created on the processes. Impact analysis also lets the decision-makers use information and prioritize based on the needs of the hour. A worksheet can be used to carry out this, summarizing the impact and identifying the loss results.
Recovery
The recovery stage includes all the possible solutions and preventive steps that would help the business overcome the downfall and recover the business operations,
Organization
A business continuity management team or committee is established to navigate the organization through the recovery process. The committee is responsible for making the right decisions and choosing the right solutions.
Training
The established team is trained to deal with the implementation of solutions. The team is responsible for going over the plan and the strategies developed to ensure its timely implementation.
Phases in the Business Continuity Management Process
The business continuity management process is initiated once the business processes are interrupted by a sudden hazard or issue. This is followed by the complete organization facing downtime and must immediately rectify the situation to restore the work momentum. This is what goes inside the business continuity management process.
This process has five major phases through which organizations tackle issues. These phases are as follows –
Establishment Phase
Once the business is in a crisis, the impact of the crisis is established. This is the establishment phase. The organization is established to have met with a crisis and the team begins work to rectify the issues caused. This recovery process is prioritized to resume the business functions. The steps that are included in this phase are as follows.
- Program initiation – Program initiation begins by defining the scope and objective of the business continuity.
- BCM Team Formation – The team formation involves the selection of the members based on the goals and responsibilities.
- Policy and Documentation Development – This is done to outline the process framework and principles to be followed by the organization.
- Awareness and Training – The training session is carried out regularly to educate all the personnel in the organization on security policies and measures and ways to recognize incoming threats.
- Recovery Time Calculations – The final step in phase one is to calculate the recovery time based on set objectives. This will help the business to decide on the steps to be taken.
Implementation Phase
This is the phase where the strategies are implemented to save the business from downtime. This stage is where the BCM committee members plan and decide on the rescue operation strategies. During this phase, certain lower-degree functionalities can be restored immediately. The organization must also put in place strategies that will minimize the impact of the interruption. Additionally, off-site data backups, alternate workplaces, and resources can be arranged to restore the work.
Optimization Phase
Once the implementation of the strategies is completed, it is now time to assess and optimize them. This is done in the optimization phase of the business continuity management process. The strategies that are implemented can be improved and enhanced to give better results. The BPM strategies, plans, and the steps to be taken can be optimized to perform with maximum potential. The key objectives of this phase are as follows –
- Continuous Improvement – Continuous process improvement benefits organizations in several ways, especially during a crisis that interrupts the process flow. Process analysis helps identify issues and suggest remedies.
- Testing – Every aspect of the strategies has to be tested for process efficiency, security policies, gaps, and weak areas and empower them.
- Stakeholder Engagement – The BCM strategy’s success not only depends on employees, but the customers, suppliers, stakeholders, and every other external factor associated with the process. Their feedback helps improve process performance.
- Benchmarking and Best Practices – Benchmarking helps improve better strategizing processes. This way, the best practices can be built and established to meet the competition in the industrial sector.
Testing and Training Phase
The fourth phase is testing and training that will help the company easily achieve the strategy-based goals and objectives. This stimulates the effectiveness of business continuity strategies. The testing and training parts can have different methods such as drills and simulation methods, helping employees to get an experience of a shutdown. The employees will know who to turn to.
Maintenance and Review Phase
The final phase of BCM is the most crucial part of the management process. The review and maintenance phase ensures that the built strategies remain effective and fit the organizational and industrial standards. This includes the revision of security policies, technologies, and also the infrastructures.
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What does Business Continuity Include?
Business continuity management is a proactive method rather than a reactive approach. It is a mission-critical operation aiding in mindfully being prepared for the downfall that can happen. A quick remedy plan is already in place which includes the following components –
- Clear and Comprehensive Guidelines – Business continuity lets the BCM team define and lay out the guidelines that aid in maintaining operations.
- Defined Levels of Response – Business continuity has different levels of response and all of these might not be urgent sets of responses that are crucial for the company to run. Everything has to be prioritized based on its use in BCM.
- A Flexible Response – The response to every crisis must be flexible and safeguard the organization.
Business Continuity Management Tools
The following are some of the business continuity management tools that help businesses ace interruptions and crises.
- Risk assessment and business impact analysis tools
- Emergency notification systems
- Business continuity planning software
- Disaster recovery tools
- Incident management systems
- Compliance management tools
- Training and simulation tools
- Analytics and reporting tools
Cflow – Ensure Business Continuity with Ease
Cflow is a cloud-based automation platform that can be used to streamline business continuity tasks. Multiple teams and departments can be brought together in a single space to collaborate and communicate effectively, helping them tackle any crisis at any given moment. The platform offers the highest security and backup capabilities, internal data crises can be negated with ease. An automation platform like Cflow minimizes manual involvement making it less susceptible to any risks.
Conclusion
A business crisis disorients a business to an extent where it can be completely impossible to return to normal. This is why it is highly essential to have a plan to overcome such instances. A business continuity management process can potentially engage the organization to tackle such issues with efficiency. Cflow is a AI-based and powerful tool that can catalyze the devised actional plan to success and restore business functions. Partner with Cflow today by signing up now.
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