You’ve probably heard of the recent service outage caused by one unfortunate CrowdStrike update and how it crippled many major businesses around the world. But did you know that a part of this disaster could have been prevented by a strong business continuity plan?
Service disruptions can occur unexpectedly, whether due to natural disasters, cyberattacks, or even a global pandemic. Without a business continuity plan in place, organizations risk significant downtime, financial loss, and damage to their reputation.
To prevent these consequences, you need your own business continuity plan. In this article, we discuss its definition, types, key compliments, and benefits. We’ll also provide you with a checklist to help you implement it, so stay tuned until the end.
A business continuity plan (BCP) is a strategic framework that outlines procedures and instructions an organization must follow in the face of disaster, both natural and man-made. Its main goal is to ensure that essential operations continue during and after a crisis.
Disruptions in business continuity caused by unforeseen events can have a harsh impact on a company regardless of its size. In fact:
The importance of a BCP thus lies in its ability to minimize downtime and financial losses by ensuring that all critical systems stay functional during a crisis. In addition to this, it also helps protect a company’s reputation and maintain compliance with industry standards.
A business continuity plan is a strategy designed to minimize disruptions to all business operations during a disaster of any kind. In contrast, a disaster recovery plan (DRP) has a more focused goal, that of restoring critical data and applications in the event of damage or destruction to your software, hardware, or data center.
The table below highlights a BCP’s broader organizational focus compared to a DRP’s more specific IT-centric focus.
Understanding the various types of business continuity is essential in creating the best possible strategy for your company. We’ve outlined each one in the sections below.
Operational continuity ensures that a company’s core operations and processes continue without significant interruptions during and after a disaster. It involves the following moving parts:
IT continuity is a type of business continuity plan focused on ensuring that an organization’s critical IT infrastructure, applications, and data remain operational in the event of a disaster. It’s fueled by the following components:
Supply chain continuity ensures the uninterrupted flow of goods and services from suppliers to customers, addressing vulnerabilities in a timely manner to prevent shortages. It’s based on a few key elements:
Workforce continuity involves creating a strategy that allows employees to continue their work safely when a crisis occurs. There are a few processes that you can put into place to guarantee this:
Customer continuity is a type of business continuity plan aimed at maintaining customer support, communication, and satisfaction during service disruptions. You can achieve this by implementing a few standard elements:
Crisis management involves coordinating responses, managing communications, and mitigating impacts during emergencies to stabilize your business. The following solutions are crucial to it:
Financial continuity means maintaining your company’s economic stability by ensuring access to funds and aptly managing financial risks during disruptions. There are a few safeguards that you can put into place to achieve it:
Reputation management is a type of business continuity plan focused on protecting a company’s image during and after a crisis. This is commonly accomplished through:
Following the key components of a business continuity plan is essential for effective incident preparedness and response. Below is an overview of each one.
A risk assessment is the foundation of a successful business continuity plan. The process begins with recognizing the types of risks an organization might face, such as natural disasters, cyberattacks, supply chain interruptions, or equipment failures.
Each identified risk is then assessed for its likelihood and potential impact on the business. By understanding these threats, organizations can focus their business continuity planning on the most significant dangers that they might face.
A business impact analysis (BIA) is a critical component of a business continuity plan that identifies and evaluates the effects of disruptions on a company’s operations. This report determines which operations are critical for the organization’s survival and estimates the potential losses that could result from their interruption.
The BIA also helps prioritize recovery efforts by determining recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs). These metrics help companies gain a better understanding of how fast they need to move in an incident, as well as how much data they can afford to lose.
Recovery strategies are detailed plans developed to restore critical business functions and operations after a disruption. They provide your organization with a roadmap to ensure quick data and asset restoration.
Developing recovery strategies means identifying alternative methods to keep essential operations afloat. Options include using backup facilities, implementing data recovery solutions, and ensuring communication channels remain open.
Plan development is the process of creating an actionable BCP that outlines the steps and procedures to follow during and after an incident. This phase involves integrating the findings of the risk assessment, BIA, and recovery strategy into a cohesive document that provides clear guidance for maintaining and restoring business operations.
The centralized plan document should be detailed and practical, covering all critical aspects of your incident response approach. This includes communication protocols, resource allocation, and specific action steps for various scenarios.
Testing and maintenance will ensure the relevance of the business continuity plan over time. Regular testing of the plan through drills, simulations, and tabletop exercises helps identify areas for improvement and ensures that everyone on the team is familiar with their responsibilities in case of an emergency.
Maintenance involves continuously updating the plan to reflect changes in the business environment, such as new risks, organizational changes, or technological advancements. This ensures the effectiveness of your BCP in every situation.
A well-developed business continuity plan offers many benefits, ensuring that organizations can withstand disruptions, maintain operations, and recover swiftly from an incident. Here are some essential ones to keep in mind:
According to a joint study from Forrester and the Disaster Recovery Journal, 65% of organizations believe that the risk of business continuity loss is increasing. What is more, cyberattacks are more often than not identified as the culprit.
Regardless of the threat, there is one sure way to avoid service disruptions and all their consequences: creating a bulletproof business continuity plan. We’ve put together the checklist below to help you get started.
On July 19th, 2024, the world experienced what might have been the largest tech disruption in history: the CrowdStrike outage. A botched product update rendered 8.5 million Windows devices practically unusable due to them being stuck in a blue screen of death loop.
Businesses worldwide, particularly in the United States and Australia, then struggled to recover from this incident. Major airlines, hospitals, banks, retailers, broadcasters, and others were unable to use their computers and didn’t have a business continuity plan in place to cover a crisis of this nature.
Following the incident, NSW Small Business Commissioner Chris Lamont reiterated the importance of a BCP when something like this happens:
“A continuity plan is not just a document, it’s a lifeline that ensures your business can continue to operate through unexpected disruptions. Whether it’s a cyber-attack, natural disaster, or technical failure, having a plan in place can minimize downtime and financial losses.”
The United Kingdom’s National Health Service wasn’t spared in the CrowdStrike outage. The disruption affected its digital appointment and patient record system, leaving many people unable to access medical services.
However, the healthcare provider was prepared for a situation like this and had a set of measures in place, including paper copies of patient records and prescriptions and traditional phone lines. These old-fashioned yet reliable alternatives helped them avoid a complete service breakdown.
The incident didn’t leave the provider unscathed, creating a backlog in services that could take weeks to resolve. However, the fact that the entire system didn’t shut down is a small victory in itself.
This wasn’t the first time the NHS was confronted with a potential loss of continuity. In fact, the British healthcare system faced plenty of situations it needed to navigate to ensure that disruptions wouldn’t hinder patients and doctors alike.
The NHS business continuity management toolkit contains case studies covering a wide array of incidents, from cyberattacks and network failures to power loss and flooding. In spite of varying circumstances, the provider was always able to resume its operations swiftly and also learn some valuable lessons for the future.
While Accenture wasn’t among the companies publicly affected by the CrowdStrike outage, we can learn from its resilience in the face of crisis. With robust plans, processes, and a dedicated team, the company demonstrates readiness for any potential disruptions.
Accenture’s strategy supports its global operations by combining technology and human ingenuity. This ensures that digital solutions work in harmony with people and align with industry-leading practices to overcome challenges.
This approach is based on a framework of business continuity, technology continuity, and crisis management to support both internal operations and client services. In this way, Accenture ensures continuous business operations and effective crisis response, enhancing its overall business resilience, as well as that of its customers.
Prioritizing business continuity planning is essential if you want to navigate disruptions effectively. By implementing comprehensive strategies—such as risk assessments, impact analyses, recovery plans, and continuous testing—businesses can ensure operational resilience in any crisis.
Remember, a business continuity plan will not magically restore your operations to their pre-incident state in the blink of an eye. What it will do is ensure that your services don’t go down completely while your team works behind the scenes to recover what was lost. And that’s the greatest gift you can give your company in an emergency: time.
Technical writer at Touchpoint with a knack for UX. Focused on creating clear, concise product documentation and engaging marketing materials alike.
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