Business continuity is a process developed to counteract systems failure, and is essential to businesses - regardless of size and sector. Business continuity plans are required to ensure that your business/organisation is able to function in the event of an emergency. Unplanned events may arise such as the the foot and mouth epidemic in 2002, the floods in 2005 and 2009, and also emergencies may arise from within the organisation, such as deliberate or accidental damage to systems.
Reasons to have a Business Continuity Plan
Should any unplanned event occur, such as the November floods or the continued cold weather, it is essential that there is a certain degree of confidence that your business could continue to deliver its services and achieve its objectives. Ensuring that there is an effective business continuity plan in place is an invaluable step that can be taken to make sure that your business suffers minimal disruption and is able to continue operating.
The following statistics provide further evidence emphasising the necessity of a business plan:
- 80% of businesses affected by a major incident close within 18 months.
- 90% of businesses that lose data from a disaster are forced to shut within two years.
- 58% of UK organisations were disrupted by September 11th. One in eight was seriously affected.
Without an effective plan in place, possible consequences for your business are:
- Complete failure of your business
- Loss of income
- Loss of reputation and/or loss of customers
- Financial, legal and regulatory penalties
- Human Resource issues
- An impact on insurance premiums.
Developing an Effective Plan
An effective business continuity plan will encompass all eventualities and should enable your business to recover quickly and efficiently should an emergency/disaster take place. The business plan should be concise and available to all staff members that are responsible for components of the plan.
The following action points should be considered when developing your business continuity plan:
- Analyse your business: this involves listing the businesses critical services and considering areas in which your business may be vulnerable for example: suppliers, partners, buildings, staffing and natural disasters such as fires, floods and flu pandemics.
- Assess the risks: consider the likelihood of certain risks and what effect certain risks will impose on your business.
- Prepare a plan: the plan should outline how you are able to continue each of your critical services and various actions for different risks should be highlighted.
- Test your plan: employees should be involved and training needs should be addressed. It is essential for the plan to be reviewed regularly.
- Consider if you are ready for all eventualities.
Read our Business Continuity Plan (PDF: 11 pages / 381Kb)
Free Business Continuity and Incident Management Planning Software Toolkit (ROBUST)
Resilient Business Software Toolkit ROBOST 2 is a free Business Continuity Software Tool released by Local Government Association produced to help the SME market and others produce effective Business Continuity Plans quickly and efficiently and manage incidents to recovery in a timely fashion. The software is entirely free, together with all supporting documentation.
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