The Value of a Business Continuity Plan

Depending on the region your organization is located in, disasters can take the form of hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, fires, power outages or severe snow storms.

“Roughly 40 to 60 percent of small organizations never reopen their doors following a disaster.  But you can.”   —   fema.gov

Imagine hard drives crashing, threats faced from computer viruses, malware, and hackers – yes, there is enough to be concerned about to require professional business continuity planning.

Organizations depend heavily on computerized information systems that run the day-to-day operations.  While this reduces the need for paper storage which can easily be lost or damaged, there can be serious consequences if the computerized information system is disrupted even for an hour.  Anything that could disrupt your organization can cause lost productivity, financial loss, or even take a company to its knees.

A properly planned business continuity plan ensures that an organization knows in advance what steps will be taken if a catastrophic situation occurs.  Resuming to normal operations as quickly as possible allows you to continue to ensure profit – even during a major disruption:

  • Have the ability to respond to an unplanned interruption
  • Implement a technology and communications recovery plan
  • Successfully restore an organization’s critical operational functions

Your organization should always be prepared to have employees be able to communicate among themselves and with your customers.  Operations should be remain resilient with very little downtime.

Too often organizations assume the likelihood of a disaster to be low, so they do not plan for it, resulting in a huge loss of revenue.

A good rule of thumb is that while disasters statistically happen to less than 1% of all organizations in any given year, events that lead to the need for business continuity happen to almost every business every year.

Here are a few examples.  Has this happened to your organization in the past year?

  • A file became corrupted and had to be recovered
  • Communications to the Internet were lost for more than a few minutes
  • Computer hardware failed
  • A licensing fee was not paid on a timely basis, whether this was for a web site, email, or a software product used on a daily basis, leading to the short-term loss of this key item until the licensing fee was paid.
  • There was a theft, loss or breakage of some piece of critical equipment

If one or more of these scenarios occurred, how did you continue to operate?  Did employees have to scramble to figure something out?  It’s much easier and more efficient to be proactive and have a well thought out plan in place.

Don’t let a disaster determine the success of your company.  Business continuity planning is easily one of the most important measures your business should take in order to prevent unnecessary downtime, data and profit loss. In the modern world you never know when, where, how, or in what form a disaster can strike.

When it comes to a preventative, and also predictive approach to IT, Bryley Systems is here to help.

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