Business interruptions range from catastrophic natural disasters to acts of terrorism to technical glitches. To hedge against these risks, organizations need business continuity and recovery resources, plans, and management.
Consider the 26 July floods in Mumbai in 2005. Companies that had business continuity plans and contracts in place with vendors of recovery services were able to continue business at alternate sites with minimum downtime and minimum loss of data.
As an example: During the Mumbai deluge mentioned above, one of the leading BPO companies reported that it was able to recover 79%, 82%, 97% and 90% of the calls on 26th, 27th, 28th July and 1st August respectively. The company also reported that had there been no business continuity initiative, the recovery levels would have been 29%, 21%, 82% and 72%. Safe to say now, Business as usual (BAU) is the primary concern of all companies and that’s where we get talking about BCP or Business Continuity Plans.
Business’s today have started realizing the importance of BCP and have made space for it in their overall strategies. Thus, in simple words, if Continuity is a question that’s boggling your minds, Business Continuity Planning(BCP) is the answer.
So, Why invest in Continuity? :
Customers expect supplies and services to continue— or resume rapidly— in all situations.
• Shareholders expect management control to remain operational through any crisis.
• Employees expect both their lives and livelihoods to be protected.
• Suppliers expect their revenue streams to continue.
• Regulatory agencies expect their requirements to be met, regardless of circumstances.
• Insurance companies expect due care to be exercised
For a company, Business Continuity can give it a competitive advantage over its peer companies, afterall which client wouldn’t want 24*7, uninterrupted business. Also, the business and economic sense derived out of it can be maximized if 2 or more companies collaborate in providing the BC services.
Effective implementation of BCP calls for promptness in testing and maintenance of the BCP .The BCP drills must be conducted regularly with proper simulation. It must be ensured that the BCP is kept up-to-date by reviewing it on a timely basis. Organisations must also maintain a well documented history of disruption and remedies
Of course, planning and implementing BCP is not an easy task and is full of challenges, none insurmountable though.
A business continuity strategy is a high-value— but high-maintenance— proposition. Business continuity embraces a broad spectrum of technologies: old and new, paper-based and electronic, manual and automated, individual and integrated.
Involvement of the entire management and employees is a key to successful implementation of Business Continuity. For this, communication with entire hierarchy is very important so that each one knows their duties.
Also, a spotty initial plan can create hiccups later on. Hence, it is of paramount importance to test the plan on regular basis to keep it glitch-free.
Thus, BCP should be considered as a responsibility by each company and something that will give a competitive advantage to the companies vying for new, big clients.
If i understand correctly, isn't BCP to companies what Insurance is to individuals. If that is the case, the cost implications of carrying out this exercise will also be important since otherwise most companies would like to adopt BCP. Also, how many of the existing companies Indian and Global have such practices in place
ReplyDelete