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The Importance of Business Continuity Planning in Uncertain Times

by | Jun 26, 2020

business plans

Business continuity plans are essential for ensuring your organization is prepared to weather uncertainty. When business disruptions occur, having a well-developed plan in place can make all the difference. Your plan should prepare for everything from making operational changes and implementing new processes to employee and customer communications. We’ve outlined reasons business continuity planning is important and how it can help you prepare for uncertain times.

Building a Continuity Plan

Your team should analyze their operations, security, and communications to identify weaknesses. Creating redundancies can enable your organization to become more resilient to disruption.

Additionally, the most effective continuity plans are continuously evaluated and updated. For example, if your continuity plan involves working from home, don’t wait until it is necessary to begin allowing remote work. Instead, create a policy that is used on a smaller scale during normal operations.

Who Should Be Involved

You should also consider involving vendors and service providers. They can help to ensure the continuity of resources that are not directly controlled by your organization.

Communicating the Plan With Stakeholders

Why Continuity Planning Matters

Planning for every possible disruption is nearly impossible. However, a robust continuity plan can enable your organization to be sufficiently flexible so that it can adapt to shifting scenarios.

Creating a continuity plan can also enable management teams to identify the weaknesses in their current operations. Focusing on asking “what if” provides a unique chance to strengthen operations, safety, and more.

Security Challenges in Business Continuity

Digital and physical threats are no less significant when a business is applying its continuity plan. You and your customers should be aware of these special considerations in such circumstances:

• Vacant facilities: If a building needs to be vacated, it can present new challenges. Having effective remote alarm monitoring can assist with the continued protection of those facilities.

• Increased crime rate: Frequently, business interruptions intersect with broader social and economic disruptions. These periods can come with increased crime rates. Continuity plans should address this accordingly.

• Remote work: Many continuity plans include some amount of working from home. Ensuring information security when resources are not centrally located can be challenging. It can be helpful to develop and implement a remote work plan before the continuity plan is activated.

Adding Reliable Alarm Monitoring to Your Business Continuity Plan

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