By Amanda Jerelyn:

The capability to continue your business operations even after a major disruptive event is important as proper business continuity management dictates stability even in the wake of adverse situations. Hence for any entrepreneur out there or business owners, it is vital for the venture’s survival that your organization is able to deal with potential threats and has a planned disaster recovery strategy that could be executed.

Business continuity planning enables your company to endure environmental changes and new conditions while ensuring that business-related operations are carried out without any hassle.

According to a recent study by Excellent Business Plans, a business plan can create a 30% greater chance of growth and double the chances of success. Every month, about 543,000 new businesses start in the USA; however, only in the first two years, 70% of them survive, whereas, in 5 years’ time, only 50% are still around or doing business.

Furthermore, it is quite interesting to note that in five years of those businesses that survive, around 70% of them follow a strategic business plan.

In light of this information, let’s take a quick look at some of the most important aspects of business continuity management.

Access to Business Resources
For any business to perform well and see through challenging times, the operatives must have clear and direct access to business resources. Business resources come in various sizes and shapes.

Even the physical location of your office or the land on which the architecture building stands is a business resource because your people need the office environment to help protect each other’s privacy but also perform tasks at a heightened level of effectiveness and efficiency.

On the other hand, business resources can also include office utensils, equipment, machinery, technological gadgets, computing devices, high-speed internet connection, Wi-Fi, etc. Hence in the wake of a business emergency, you need to make sure that your employees are not cut off from basic access to these viable resources.

Business Impact Analysis
BIA or business impact analysis is widely known as a systematic process through which you can determine and evaluate the potential impact an interruption to business operations can cause. This can include a disaster which can result in a critical business operation suffering. In other instances, you can also take into account possible accidents and different types of emergency.

BIAs are a crucial part of your business continuity plan, which can also be further explored to discover vulnerabilities or reveal any shortcomings in the current method or operations. Hence, in short, a BIA report describes the potential risk factor any organization studied while paying attention to detail.

Business Risk Assessment
Business risks are referred to as the inadequate performances, uncertainties, downfalls, or events that yield undesirable results when it comes to corporate settings. This can include demographic changes in the audience, upcoming trends, rise in competition, and awareness for alternate options or counterparts.

On the other hand, business risk assessments enable your organization to stay on top of adverse situations and utilize strategic preventive tools that can help mitigate all aforementioned risks. Through Risk Analysis, your organization can identify or analyze potential concerns and issues relating to your venture that could negatively impact your initiatives and projects. Hence you come across a wide variety of factors that may jeopardize the success of your business.

Communication (Internal + External)
Without proper means, channels, and mediums of communication, an organization can suffer severely. Communication allows the free transfer of valuable information.

Hence it would be best if you made sure that all communication channels are working properly and that information is being broadcasted to those who need it the most. When it comes to your external communications, this involves your customers, clients, and stakeholders.

You have to comfort them and make them believe in you. Ensure them that everything is in order and that you need to redevelop your credibility and level of trust in them. On the other hand, your external communication includes employees and staff. Here you will be offering them quick tasks and instructions that can help in regaining control of the situation.

Defined Team & Roles
It is just like toddlers. While they also need instructions to get through the day, likewise, defining your team members’ roles is a great way to get their energies focused. While their everyday routine, regime, and daily targets can vary, in the case of emergencies or urgencies, you should have defined roles as well. This will let them known what they need to do during a time where things go south.

With everyone catering to at least one specific problem, you can easily overcome a lot of problems and cover a lot of ground.

Hence your team shouldn’t only have defined roles for normal days but also during the time of troubles. Aspiring young learners, who opt for essay writers and is currently performing a group task, should heed this advice and assign roles to all team members.

Employee Professional Development
Another way to ensure that your business can overcome adverse situations is to improve its professional skills. The more competent your team is, the more capable they are to face challenges and leave rivals in the dust. However, in some cases, let’s suppose a fire erupts and your employees are somehow not technically trained to handle such a problem.

In that case, there will be more damage caused by the fire and very little chance that the company would be able to recover from such a disaster. However, in contrast, a team has been offering their employees suitable disaster training. In that situation, the fire will be taken care of in early succession, but the majority of its damages can also be prevented from happening in the first place.

Incident Response Plan
An incident response plan is a set of tools and procedures that your security team can use to detect, identify, eliminate, and recover from security threats or security breaches. The majority of businesses these days deal with sensitive knowledge. Protecting this volatile information becomes a top priority.

Much of this information often includes customers and their private data and the company’s financial data and its clients both. Hence, if there is a security breach god forbid, your organization should most definitely have an incident response plan that can quickly aid you and your team recover.

Conclusion
Surviving after a causality or a disaster is part of daily life. Our lives and the corporate sector are full of uncertainties, so you must carry risk assessment for your venture. Not only should you be prepared to handle an unforeseeable event, but have contingencies in place that protect your operations from coming to a standstill or halting the progress of your venture.

I hope this post was able to offer you some meaningful insights regarding business continuity management and how you can make your venture survive a climatic event. Cheers, and all the best for your future endeavors!

About the Author: Amanda Jerelyn currently works as a Content Executive at Crowd Writer. This is where higher education students can pay for essay writing to acquire specialized assistance for their subjects and topics. During her leisure time, she likes to surf the internet for the latest developments in the world of tech.