Top business continuity management is the process of ensuring a continuous and reliable supply of services over an acceptable period, by managing the risks involved in changing or interrupting business. Business continuity management encompasses, but is not limited to, the presence of critical infrastructure and personnel, critical business processes, and major systems. BCM planning should be an ongoing task that is completed in ever-changing circumstances. Most businesses have more pressing priorities than BCM so they often do not take the time to plan. Here are some reasons why top business continuity management Is vital for your company.
1. Disaster Recovery
Disaster recovery is the process of restoring operations following a business disruption. It is generally considered to be the first step in business continuity management. Disaster recovery is only part of the process, as it focuses on restoring an organization’s IT infrastructure. Once a company has restored its IT capabilities, disaster recovery must address issues such as how to get employees back to work, how to give access back to vital systems, and how to restore client data from backup systems if necessary.
2. Ensure Business Continuity
Business continuity planning aims at minimizing the impact of disasters on an organization through effective preparedness, prevention, and mitigation measures, and the ability to respond quickly and efficiently with minimal damage when a disaster does occur.
3. Know the risks of downtime
Businesses have an advantage when it comes to the ability to plan for downtime because they already understand their business. The process of planning for the downtime should address the various risks associated with a planned outage and how to mitigate them. It is important that there is a realistic plan in place for every contingency and this should be reviewed continuously by a senior management person. Senior management should be aware of all aspects pertaining to available resources and benchmarks, and identify issues related to timelines, costs, as well as the impact on the organization’s daily operations.
5. Risk Management
Risk management is the identification, assessment, and prioritization of potential events that could impact an organization. Once identified, it is important to think about how impactful a particular risk would be to the business and what steps should be taken to ensure that this risk does not negatively affect operations. This can come in the form of assets such as machinery or data, physical assets (buildings, etc.), personnel, and service providers.
6. Human Resources
It is important for the business continuity management planning team to have access to all departments within your organization. In order for the planning team to fully understand your current environment, they need insight from each department within business units from accounting, marketing, human resources, IT, and executive leadership.
7. Marketing plan
A business continuity plan is a document that lays out how a company would respond when confronted with a crisis event. A BCMS is an overall framework within which the plans are developed, reviewed, and updated. The BCM policy should be promulgated throughout the organization in order to ensure that all employees are aware of their responsibilities and understand how they can help minimize risks to the business in an emergency situation while maintaining quality service delivery and operations as efficiently as possible during normal conditions.
Conclusion
There are a lot of activities involved that can be detailed by a developed business continuity management plan. Without this BCM Plan, the potential for loss is great. A business continuity management plan will better prepare your team to execute and estimate the time it will take to recover from the disaster and initiate a recovery process.
