When disaster strikes and interrupts your business operations, you need to take quick, decisive action. Having a business continuity plan in place can help, but continuity plans often miss key elements, which could cause problems when you try to get your business back up and running. The following are several key elements to check for when creating or reviewing your business continuity plan:
- Suppliers: when choosing third-party suppliers, thoroughly vet their business continuity plan. Their resilience after a business interruption can equally affect your company’s operations, and if business continuity is one of their priorities, you can confidently do business with them.
- Alternative locations: If your business’ building experiences a gas leak or flood, can your operations continue in alternative locations? Whether you have an arrangement for a backup office space or you allow employees to work remotely, plans for alternative working arrangements need to be in place.
- Situation-specific plans: Your business continuity plan should have the singular goal of restoring your operations. However, the steps you take to reach that solution are unique to each possible scenario, and your continuity plan should reflect that. Allow for different solutions that fit diverse scenarios—your plan should be agile and adaptable to changing circumstances.
- Testing: Practise your plan often, using scenario-based exercises or live walk-throughs. For example, if your backup database administrator cannot remember how to properly recover the database, it is better to discover this in a practice session instead of a real situation.
