What is a Business Continuity Plan? Do You Need One?
Do you have a business continuity plan? Reports show that at least 80% of startup businesses in Nigeria fail within the first year. Strange considering how hard-working and intelligent Nigerians are. What could be the cause of this failure?
There are several causes but one stands out, lack of a business continuity plan. What does that even mean and how does it apply to your business? Read on to find out.
What is a Business Continuity Plan?
Several schools of thought have given meaning to this concept. Let’s check out a few of them. Business Continuity Plan is a document that outlines instructions and procedures an organization needs to follow when faced with disaster. Such disasters could be fire, cyber-attack, flood, or a pandemic.
Another school of thought considers business continuity planning as a process. This process creates a system to help a business prevent and recover from potential threats. Through this plan, staff and assets attain protection from the threat and can bounce back to normal function soonest.
One last definition. A business continuity plan is a roadmap that guides a business back to normalcy in the face of an emergency. Different companies or businesses have different plans based on their different operations.
Do you need a Business Continuity Plan?
Many businesses in Nigeria overlook continuity and leave a lot to chance. This is probably because most businesses in this part of the world are “sole proprietorship” in nature. But what happens when the sole proprietor dies or a pandemic like COVID-19 hits?
Most of the time we blame lack of running capital as the chief cause of business failure. Little do we know that lack of planning for unforeseen circumstances is a stronger enemy. Even if there are excess funds, without proper planning, such funds will end up a waste.
Here’s why you need a Business Continuity Plan.
Organizational Assurance
Your business must be able to assure its customers, partners, and vendors towards emergencies. Employees need to know that your business is not going to crash like a pack of cards when a disaster arises.
As such, your business needs a plan to communicate quickly to stakeholders during emergencies. Also, you need to have a plan that pulls you through the situation as quickly as possible. This is what keeps stakeholders believing in the viability of your business.
Risk Management
Disruptions in your business, especially during an emergency, can quickly deteriorate into a business crisis. One poor management decision regarding the risks involved could spiral into serious damage control costs.
With a business continuity plan, you don’t have to make hurried decisions or react to the situation. All you’d be doing is implementing a pre-existing plan which may require very little adjustment (if any).
Quality Control
The quality of your products or services at all times is very important. Customers observe inconsistencies and take them very seriously. What then happens when a disaster affects your chain of production or service delivery?
A business continuity plan helps you maintain quality across the board. It helps you set in place replacement infrastructure and personnel. This way, there is no disparity in the quality of products or services even in the face of adversity.
Fewer Downtimes
A few days away from production or service delivery could cause the downfall of a business. When emergencies occur and there is no prior plan, such downtimes are inevitable. This is why many businesses fail.
A business continuity plan keeps you running through the emergency mitigating the effects as much as possible. While other businesses are crying foul, you’ll be souring to new heights.
Attributes of an efficient Business Continuity Plan
By now you should have realized that every business, regardless of size, needs a business continuity plan. Beyond this, there is a greater challenge if your business continuity plan is not efficient. The results may even be worse than having no plan at all.
What are the attributes of an efficient business continuity plan?
Frequent testing of backup strategies
It is important to run frequent checks on your backup plan to be sure of its efficiency. Let’s say one of your strategies is to store business data on remote servers in case of a cyber-attack. It is important to check the retrieval process of information from such servers before an emergency occurs.
You also need to check that such data cannot be compromised by hackers or viruses. This should make this point a little clearer.
Involve all employees
If you have employees, then they must be part of your plan. Each employee needs to know their role in the overall plan. To do this, you might need to relate with each department to explain your business continuity plan.
Show them how valuable they are to your business and its existence at all times. Make sure there is a plan for them and their families, not your business alone, during such emergencies.
Establish and prioritize essential business functions
Even if everything breaks down during a crisis, your essential business functions must keep running. Your business continuity plan needs to identify such functions and protect them as much as possible.
You mustn’t work based on assumptions in this regard. Work with your best hands to figure out what aspect of your business process needs the most protection. Build your plan around this to keep the business running even in a disaster.
Create succession plans for key employees
Many business owners overlook this. As much as you don’t want to hear this, you won’t have a trusted employee forever. What happens if one of your key employees leave, fall sick, or die? Will your business continuity plan collapse?
It is always better to have substitutes in case of such unforeseen circumstances. Even you, as the business owner, shouldn’t be indispensable. Share your role in the plan with someone else just in case you are not available during the emergency.
Conclusion
Rise above emergencies and unforeseen circumstances by creating a business continuity plan. Having this in place is crucial to your business riding the storm in the most difficult times. We have shared a few advantages of a business continuity plan with you in this post. Have any others, share them in the comments section.
