10 Things You Consider To Make an Effective Business Continuity Plan

Unforeseen crisis of natural occurrences is likely to occur at any given time. When such happens, businesses that are affected may suffer infrastructural damages and other related loses. Sometimes, such occurrences may not be naturally induced, like the case of IT system infiltrations or other security breaches. Businesses are expected to guard themselves against these backdrops with a business continuity plan.

These are the 10 things to consider:

1. Critical Business Functions
   Pinpoint those business functions and processes that are essential for your business operations. At the period of crisis, you have to evaluate which of the functions are to remain and which of them should be discarded.
2. Essential Equipment And Systems
   The central processing units of your company may be totally damaged and subsequently, lose your company’s vital data. Therefore, you have to provide an adequate backup alternative such as the use of cloud computing services to secure your data.
3. Potential Risks And Threats
   The efficiency of your business continuity plan is determined by the severity of the crisis. You can use the law of averages to determine which of the disasters are likely to occur in your present location. This means using statistical records of the past to predict the likelihood of such even repeating again.
4. Emergency Contact Information
   Emergencies do not give you the leisure to browse the internet. For this reason, it imperative for you to printouts of current lists of fire stations or hospitals and police stations and have this list posted in every department.
5. Disaster Recovery Team
   Companies should constitute a Disaster Recovery Team, which should include all the heads of departments. The reason is that these authorities are the ones who respond promptly with commands to the crisis.
6. Roles And Responsibilities
   Clearly, state the role of each member of the recovering team. Mix the team with different professionals.
7. Emergency Drills
   Conduct regular emergency safety drills for your employees. They should always be abreast of what to do in case of any unpleasant incident.
8. Data Backup Plan
   Provide an efficient means of data storage. This implies that you should have other data backup plans so that if there were any physical damages to your facilities and types of equipment, your data would still be recalled.
9. Alternative Facilities And Equipment
   Make an alternative plan for where your company can get temporary accommodation if its business location is destroyed by any crisis. Assign which of the employees should be having a computer to backup your data from their homes.
10. Alternative Communication
    Should in case the crisis destroys all the forms of communication with your employees; provide a rallying point where all of your staff would be converging during and after the disaster.

Conclusion

The act of placing a continuity plan for your business is highly recommendable as it helps your organization to recover quickly from any form of disaster. However, there are some preventable crises, which you can stop from happening to your company. Such man-made crises are data theft and security breaches, hacker attacks and equipment breakdown.
Having a workable business continuity plan gives you room on not only to recover but also to continue in business as usual.

Daven Michaels is a New York Times Best Selling Author and CEO of premiere global outsourcing company, 123Employee. The company employs hundreds of young bright individuals on three continents. His International event, Beyond Marketing Live! Inspires entrepreneurs to build & grow their business with revolutionary new theories and systems allowing them to design the business and personal lifestyle of their dreams.