Why do we need a Business Continuity Plan?
Picture the scene, you are phoned at 3 am to be told there is a major fire at your premises. You are inevitably upset and as you arrive, your worst fears are confirmed. Your mind is racing with thoughts about what you will say to your staff and customers. What will happen tomorrow when people start arriving for work and customers start phoning in? But there are no phones to answer! What should you do first? Where will we all go? What is going to happen? If you don't know what needs to happen, customers and staff will leave you and the business will go down fast - that's what!
For most businesses, advance planning for the possibility of a catastrophe, will determine whether they can survive should the worst ever happen. A catastrophe may be something much less dramatic than a fire, but the key component that marks out the survivors is a Disaster Recovery or Business Continuity plan. Come the day, those that need one are unlikely to survive without one. These UK statistics tell the story.
- 80% of businesses that suffer a major catastrophe, perhaps serious fire or weather damage, go out of business within 3 years.
- 40% of businesses that suffer a critical IT failure go out of business within 1 year.
But doesn't my insurance solve this problem?
Business interruption insurance is another essential because it provides a financial safety net while the business is recovering, but it takes more than cash to breathe life back into a business that has suffered a major setback. Recovery will depend on leadership, good organisation, survival of essential data, documents, perhaps the ability to maintain production or at least to tell your customers with confidence that you have secured the future. After the event is too late to discover what those plans needed to be.
How to build and maintain a sound plan
So we need a written plan. Where do we start? You could start with a blank sheet of paper but most busy people value an organised approach and the support of people with experience and the tools to achieve the task. Using the latest software, we can help you at either of these two levels :
- Work with you to create a framework plan which you can then take over in Word format and develop to completion. Building a framework plan will not be less than a morning's work.
- Work with you through to plan completion using the software to maintain, develop and review the plan with the ability, at every stage, to produce hard and soft copies in Word or PDF format.
Effectiveness of any plan will depend on what you put into it plus a commitment to review and update it. The plan will be as good as you agree to make it but change will erode its value if it is not reviewed and developed.
Require more information? email info@lycetts.co.uk
