Business Continuity Planning in this Economic Cycle

Is business continuity planning something that you need to do during an economic downturn? Or is this a "nice to have" that can be put on the back-burner and looked at when the economy picks-up?

I am going to argue that now is the time you should be developing and implementing a full business continuity plan.

Many companies cut back on their marketing and spending during tough economic times. The same is true for those projects that they know they need to complete but they have always had other projects with a higher priority to take care of first. Business Continuity Planning is one of those projects. As many marketing people will tell you, during tough economic times, you should increase your marketing, not cut back. People still need to know you are in business. Companies still need to buy your services; they need to find you.

So why should you consider developing a Business Continuity Plan now?

I suggest you take a look at your supply chain. Do you have one or two main suppliers of your raw material? Do you have one or two customers that provide over 50% of your revenues? What would happen if any one of these companies went out of business? Could your business survive?

A Business Continuity Plan is not a program that can or should be deferred until the "time is right". The only right time is now to begin developing and implementing a plan.

Disasters happen at the worse possible time. They do not wait until you or your executives say that they can respond to the emergency or disaster event.

My advice is to start your planning now. When everyone else is experiencing problems, you will be able to know that you have thought through your business' primary activities and will know how to respond effectively and efficiently to any emergency event.

Could you use your Business Continuity Plan right now?

The Business Continuity Plan for most companies has taken a long time to develop and consumed numerous resources, in dollars and staff time. It is maintained regularly with updated contact lists and team members are required to sign-off that they have read the plan and understand it. The plan document sits in a big red binder on every manager’s office and people even have copies at home.

But, could it actually be used during an emergency to bring the company back to an operational status?

Here are some things that you need to ask about your plan before answering yes to the question just asked.

How is the document organized? Does it have tables and lists of team members, vendors, clients, inventory, call trees and other great information spread throughout the plan?

Are the actual recovery tasks detailed so that someone with a little bit less experience can follow them and restore or recover the technology and business activities?

Where are the recovery tasks actually located in the document? Are they at the back after pages and pages of company information, the recovery philosophy, schedules and maps? Or are the tasks up front where they should be so that they are readily available and the team members do not have to flip through pages and pages of information that they do not need.

A well organized plan document can save a lot of time during an actual disaster and can also make the maintenance of the plan easier if it is well designed and the layout is actually usable by those people who will need it after an emergency event.

Testing Business Continuity Plans – do you do enough?

Many more companies have come to realize that the development an implementation of a Business Continuity Program is now a good business practice. The existence of this program gives the executives, the staff, the Board of Directors and shareholders a feeling of confidence in the effective and quick recovery of the business operations in the event of a disaster.

Every year the plan gets that Auditor’s tick mark and people point to the report and say that they are covered should a disaster occur. And every year the plan gets put back into the binder and put back on the shelf only to be dusted off next year.

So could you really recover using your plan documentation?

Do you know what is in your plan? Has your plan been updated with all of the technology and business changes that have occurred this year? Has it been tested?

An untested plan is not any better than not having a plan. If the plan has not been kept up-to-date then it is best left in the binder during a disaster because it will only hinder your recovery not help it take place.

Testing can be passive for business plans and crisis management plans and active for technology recovery plans. You need to implement a comprehensive testing program for all of your company’s recovery plans.

Each test should have objectives and the results should be documented and any discrepancies between expectations and actual results addressed.

No finger pointing is allowed. Take an objective look at why the plan did not work as expected. Was a critical update missed? Were the objectives set too high for the level of experience of your test team and testing program? There is no sense in trying to recover your complete company during the first or second exercise. You need to take small gradual steps to develop your team’s confidence in their capability to properly execute the instructions in the plan. Too fast and they will become disheartened, to slow and they will become bored.

Once you have implemented your testing program and your team has gained confidence in their capability then you can start to set harder to reach goals.

Along with the testing program, you also need to implement a proper maintenance program for the plan documents.

Once you have put these programs in place only then can you and those people who rely on your company be sure that the company could be recovered quickly and fully after a disaster event.

Emergency Preparedness Week May 4 to May 10

Once again the annual Emergency Preparedness week is taking place in Canada.

The Canadian government publishes pamphlets and checklists to try to raise awareness that everyone should prepare home and car emergency kits containing food water, safety equipment, clothes and other items that a family would need to survive for 72 hours on their own should an emergency occur.

While 72 hours sounds like it should be more than enough time before the emergency services clean up the emergency and life gets back to normal, I believe that families should actually prepare for a longer time frame. I would suggest closer to a week to 10 days.

Once an emergency is declared, your mobility along with the capability of stores to be re-supplied may be severely restricted. Areas may be flooded, they may be quarantined and no traffic is allowed into the area, there just may not be any power so everything is forced to remain closed.

So how do you prepare to survive for 10 days? You start by buying additional items for your pantry every time you shop. You add an extra can of food, an extra roll of paper towels, buy plastic bags for your waste and gradually build up your supplies.

You also need to think about how you will obtain any medications that you will need. Your family doctor maybe part of the emergency response and not be available to see you, you may not be able to see him anyway as travel may be restricted. While it may not be possible to stockpile medications, you should at least have this discussion with your family doctor to see what could be done during an emergency.

Also consider having a list of your primary contacts including your insurance agent, available as part of your emergency evacuation kit. Depending on the emergency, your home may experience damage which will need to be addressed once the emergency is over and you are allowed back home.

Don’t forget your pets, they will need food and water as well.

If you have to evacuate your home, you should consider where you are being evacuated to. How will your pets be received?

You can obtain more information and download the pamphlets and checklists at Getprepared.ca

You never know when an emergency could happen, get prepared now.

Other reasons to implement Business Continuity planning

What are the reasons that you develop business continuity plans for your company?

Sure there are the usual reasons; if a disaster strikes we will be able to continue operations. We need it to get government contracts. It differentiates us from our competition. It is good business sense to plan for the unexpected.

How about gaining a better understanding of your business? How about helping to make strategic business decisions?

According to a survey conducted by Marsh, an insurance and risk company in the UK, many businesses are now looking at business continuity planning as something more than just a compliance or insurance issue. They are looking at this planning as a good practice to manage their overall operational risk.

These companies can use this planning to spot risky interdependencies, better allocate resources to key processes and activities and improve risk management in their companies.

Could your business survive a supply chain interruption?

Businesses of all sizes have a supply chain that they rely on for the successful continuation of their business. For some companies, the supply chain keeps their production line operating by providing just in time delivery of component parts, pick-up of finished parts and off-site storage or parts and materials. For others, their supply chain may not be as obvious to the business. For companies that rely on partners or other businesses to provide information or deliverables that the company uses to produce the final design or report, these providers are part of the company’s supply chain.

Does your company outsource the provisioning of services, such as finance, Human Resources or auditing? These could also be considered part of your supply chain. Some of the companies providing these services may be smaller and less resilient to a disruption to their business.

In order to manage the risks to your company from your supply chain, you need to understand your organization’s activities and processes.

· The critical functions and activities should be identified.

· The impact to the company that a loss of a supplier may have.

· The risks that could impact the supplier.

Once all of this information has been gathered, then you can start to mitigate the risks to your business that could occur due to a supply chain problem.

The loss of a supplier is a major risk today as more business functions are outsourced. It is necessary to validate the supplier’s recovery capability before committing all of your activities to any one supplier.

Preparing for disaster – could Canadian businesses be legislated to develop Business Continuity Plans?

In today’s corporate world with its associated risks and potential problems to a businesses survival, there is very little legislation that relates back to companies having a business continuity program in place.

In other countries around the world, legislators are moving to impose rules and regulations that would mean that companies would have to develop and implement business continuity programs. These future rules and regulations would be based on existing standards such as the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) 1600 and others.

The NFPA 1600 standards define business continuity as “an ongoing process supported by senior management and funded to ensure that the necessary steps are taken to identify the impact of potential losses, maintain viable recovery strategies and recovery plans, and ensure continuity of services through personnel training, plan testing and maintenance.”

The United States House of Representatives presented a bill in August 2007 that was signed into law that encourages the use of business continuity and disaster recovery standards for the private sector. This law specifically cites the NFPA 1600 code.

Will Canadian legislators follow suite? If they don’t will any Canadian company doing business with the US be required to show that they have a business continuity plan in place? I don’t know, but I do believe that if the US and other countries governments are moving in this direction, it may be of benefit for Canadian companies to begin planning and developing their business continuity plans now to stay ahead of the curve.

An article at http://www.forbes.com/opinions/2008/01/16/disaster-preparedness-companies-oped-cx_slw_0117disaster.html talks about this in a bit more detail.

Cold and flu season – social distancing and sneeze etiquette

With the cold and flu season now in full swing, is your company using social distancing techniques and introducing cough and sneeze etiquette into the workplace to help ensure that the impact to your staff is minimized?

By implementing these two methods of controlling the spread of flu viruses and cold germs now, your staff will be aware of these methods and will be comfortable with their use within your company. This knowledge will mean that should an Influenza Pandemic occur and the World Health Organization (WHO) raises their alert level to stage 4; it will be to your companies benefit if social distancing and sneeze and cough etiquette can be implemented quickly and efficiently.

For an article on Social Distancing you can go to:

http://www.chacocanyon.com/pointlookout/060510.shtml

For information on Cough and Sneeze Etiquette see:

http://www.cdc.gov/flu/protect/covercough.htm