The Beginner’s Guide to Planning for Business Continuity

You probably don’t think much about your network and systems – until they are unavailable to you. Most problems are easily remedied, but would you know what to do if disaster struck? From storms to floods and data breaches and outright cyber-crime, any form of network emergency is a risk, could totally disrupt your organization, and make it difficult to continue to run smoothly afterward. You need a plan in place – one that will allow you to keep working during and after an emergency. Business continuity planning and risk assessment can help you stay up and running, even if there is chaos around you and your business.

What Is Business Continuity?

Business continuity is a strategy designed to prevent downtime and aid in recovery after a disaster or critical emergency. A business continuity plan looks different for every brand. Yours should address your specific business needs and concerns. No matter what areas are most important to you, avoiding downtime ensures that your critical functions can still be accessed, even if your facility is underwater, on fire or otherwise unusable. From accessing key human resources files to serving your customers, disaster recovery planning is a must for any brand. You can’t prevent accidents or control nature — but you can protect your data and critical business functions when a disaster strikes.

Why Your Business Needs a Plan to Restore Critical Business Functions

It is critical that your business be able to resume operations as swiftly as possible after a fire, flood or other setbacks. According to FEMA, up to 60% of small- to mid-sized businesses who experienced downtime after an emergency closed within a year. That number soars to a whopping 90% if the downtime extends beyond five days. Many of these organizations simply failed to plan for emergencies or had plans that were too outdated to provide the necessary business support when disaster struck.

Having a risk management plan in place that addresses business continuity can prevent you from experiencing the outages and downtimes that can lead to a prolonged, expensive recovery. A plan for business continuity can also prevent you from being one of the brands who is forced to close weeks or even months after a disaster causes irreparable harm.

Help With Planning Business Continuity

While you do need to have a comprehensive and ready-to-deploy business continuity plan in place, you don’t have to go it alone. Even if you have a dedicated Information Technology (IT) staffer on-site, working with a team that specializes in risk management and recovery strategies is a must. Your IT person is a generalist – they can cover a very diverse group of needs. But for business continuity, you need a specialist to ensure you are fully covered.

Get the peace of mind that comes from knowing you have a plan even if the worst happens. Contact our team at Integrated Axis today to learn how easy it is to fully protect your business without having to DIY or pull your own IT folks away from their work.