The five-step business continuity plan

Here are five steps that will guide you towards creating your own business continuity plan. It could save your business. Business continuity planning is either viewed as business-critical or a waste of money. But the best-run businesses plan to expect the unexpected. One in four businesses suffer an outage of at least one day. Even more concerning is the fact that this costs £10,000 an hour.

The greatest cost could be a damaged reputation. From the chief executive of BP, to an unpronounceable volcano, we are constantly reminded that crises can happen. We cannot prepare for every incident, but we can ensure that our business continuity plan can conquer all.

The Board.
The aim is to never use a business continuity plan. However, members of The Board can fool themselves into believing it’s not needed at all. Switch on the news, and this may change.
This doesn’t mean shock-tactics are the way forward, but point out what could go wrong if the unthinkable happened. Make The Board feel part of the process, and ensure all input is heard. Providing management with a sense of ownership will really help.

Be prepared.
Your team, at the very least, should include: management, chief security officer, IT and HR. This should strike the right balance between understanding the business and the people.
In preparation for a crisis:

• Prioritise critical activities to be maintained ahead of all others
• Produce hard copies of important information and contacts
• Backup files regularly; ensure they are available off-site
  

There’s no use in having a plan if you don’t know if it’s going to work. Evaluate your plan annually:

• Look for inconsistencies and updates
• During a table-top exercise, participants can learn their duties in the event of an emergency, also highlighting any issues
• Create an exercise based on a realistic scenario.
  

Talk to everyone.
If a crisis takes place, communication is all-important. Your enemy is the rumour mill – tell the story before someone tells it for you.
You should:

• Run regular team briefings – help maintain solidarity
• Ensure the business continuity plan is available for employees
• Brief external parties frequently
• Use web conferencing to ensure remote locations remain unaffected by closures
• Use social media to keep everyone informed in real-time.
  

Evolution Not Revolution
More than a billion of us will own smart mobile devices by the end of the year. Taking our work to the small screen could be of massive benefit if faced with a crisis that prevented us from returning to the office. The 'cloud’ is constantly on the agenda. Cloud-based computing allows for all servers and databases to be hosted off-site. This is complemented by virtualization: live migration allows the movement of a virtual machine, while it remains running on the original server. This would allow for a seamless transition in the event of a crisis.

Learn.
Firebrand offers a three-day Business Continuity Training course. You will learn everything about the business continuity management life cycle, and how to manage the situation if your business were to fall victim to a crisis.