 BUSINESS CONTINUITY PLANNING
Running a business, regardless of its size, can be unpredictable. A crisis that threatens your business can happen at any time, without warning!
INTRODUCTION
WOULD YOUR BUSINESS SURVIVE A CRISIS
Regardless of whether you are a large company, small business or a voluntary organisation.
Business Continuity Managment (BCM) is planning to ensure that your business is prepared in the event of a crisis, enabling you to respond and recover ensuring that your business has a relatively smooth and painless return to 'Business as Usual' as soon as possible.
JUST ASK YOURSELF
- How long could you cope if there was a power cut or the phones went down?
- What would you do if you were unable to gain access to your premises?
- How long would it be before a small inconvenience becomes a major problem?
- What would you do if your staff or customers were unable to access your premises due to a fire or flood?
- How will your business keep going if half of your staff were unable to get into work, or are sick?
- How long could your business operate without electricity or running water?
- What if disruption prevented delivery to your main customer? Would they stay with you or go to a competitor?
- How easy would it be to contact your customers and suppliers to inform them of any problems - even if you did not have access to your premises or database?
- Can you alert your staff in the event of disruption out of hours?
If the answer to ANY of these questions is NO then you need to know more about business continuity planning!
1 in 5 businesses suffers a major disruption every year, yours could be next - ARE YOU PREPARED TO GAMBLE WITH YOUR BUSINESS?
THE FACTS
- 80% of businesses affected by a major incident either never re-open or close within 18 months
- 90% of businesses that suffer significant loss of data go out of business within two years
- Only 49% of organisations have business continuity plans in place - of these only 37% actually test or rehearse their plans
The Good News
- 94% of orgnanisations who have invoked their business continuity plans agreed that they had significantly reduced the impact of the disruption.
(Information supplied by the Chartered Management Institute Business Continuity Survey 2006)
You will have invested heavily in your business and you need to ensure that it remains safe, secure and viable. Business continuity planning helps you to improve your security and provide resilience to your business thereby protecting your livelihood. the information give aims to make you aware of the risks that your busienss may be vulnerable to, from both outside and within the business itself. Making you better informed and better prepared.
Please find below a link to Breckland Council's Business Continuity Planning guide. This Guide contains information and templates to help you understand the importance of business continuity and take the first steps in creating a business continuity plan for your business.
Link to the Business Continuity Planning guide (pdf doc, 663kb)
Another document that you may find useful is the Business Continuity Management Toolkit. To download this please click onto the link. BCM toolkit (pdf doc, 569kb).
Other Business Continuity Information
The Objectives of Business Continuity Planning
5 Easy Steps to Business Continuity Planning
Ten Top Tips
10 Minute Assessment
Contact Us and Useful Business Continuity Links
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