Why develop a Business Continuity Program?

A Business Continuity Program is the complete action plan to help prevent disasters and set up a plan to recover from an unexpected event that interrupts your business. A large percentage of businesses do not survive a disaster and end up out of business. Stay in business for the long term – be ready for disaster and unexpected events with a complete Business Continuity Plan.

A Business Continuity Program is sometimes viewed as an expensive program for many companies. You hear comments like:

“We don’t need it; we have never had a problem.”
“We have insurance.”
“Our people are really good. If something happens they will get us back operational in no time”

Believing these statements could prevent your company from surviving an emergency or disaster event.

If your company has never experienced a problem, consider yourself very lucky. Remember a problem does not have to happen at your facility. What happens if your major supplier or customer has a problem? What if another company in your building or campus has a problem? Any of these problems could impact your business.

You have insurance, but many sources of disasters are not covered by business insurance. Business interruption insurance covers the lost profits, buildings and operational costs. But if you have no business to operate, or no building to work out of, then insurance will not really help.

Sure your people are good, but even the best people will have trouble recovering your business if they do not know where they are going to recover the business and what they need to recover. You could buy everything after a disaster and locate a new building and build out the infrastructure and contact your clients and suppliers, etc. You also have to consider that your best people may not be available to recover your business. They may be hurt, on vacation, stressed due to the disaster or they may have died in the disaster.

By developing a Business Continuity Program for your company and making business continuity part of your corporate culture, you will be well on your way to becoming a company that will be able to survive an emergency or disaster event.

Excerpted from “Business Continuity Program Development – A Basic Guide” developed by Business Continuity & Recovery Consulting