Business Continuity - best practise approach to managing data - in everyday processes

Being ready for everything and anything is important. One of the problems I consistently come across is businesses facing major delays because they do not have a best practice approach. Increasing amounts have poorly devised methodologies, lack value in their data quality management, are unable to meet deadlines and have poorly trained resources. When people think of business continuity they tend to think of huge catastrophic events war, floods, terrorism, the global financial crisis and so forth.

Organisations need not continue focusing on disasters of such severe nature but rather on small incidents which through adequate planning can be averted. It is no longer adequate to place the spotlight on what one can do after an incident but rather to put attention on what happens prior, during and after. Much awareness has been placed on recovery. Should adequate controls be in place then revival need not be an option.

Business continuity can help your company save money every day of the year. Small mundane operations often overlooked can cause bottlenecks becoming single points of failure. Decisions should be made through comprehensive planning as opposed to being managed ‘on the fly.’

Few people understand continuity often expecting a large capital outlay. No two companies are the same having different processes and procedures. A flexible methodology should be malleable to organisations of all types. A business continuity plan drives down operational loss. The aforementioned cannot operate without adequate communication and decisive project management skills.

For maintenance of organisational resilience senior management need to press home the interests to staff, customers and those who are dependent on the organisation. Whilst companies are often quick to look at financial costs which accumulate as the result of an interruption they are quick to forget about reputation. Most people have the attitude that a disaster will never happen. Minor interruptions occur on a daily basis and often they are outside of an organisations control. Higher degrees of competence are called for. Business Continuity needs to be looked at as an investment not a cost.  

Written by

Jason Brill

Business Development Consultant

OpsCentre