4 things to do to ensure your business continuity plan is a success

Working on creating a contingency plan for your business? That’s great! Here are 4 things you need to consider when preparing your new business continuity plan.

Audit, audit, audit
Having a business continuity plan alone is not enough. You need to audit it at regular intervals to ensure it is up-to-date and relevant. Often, plans aren’t used for years, and may be obsolete or irrelevant by the time an actual emergency occurs.

Create a Team
Constitute a team for your continuity project. Decide who will take ownership of implementing the plan in the event of an emergency. Break down the continuity plan into smaller elements and decide who is responsible for each of them. Also, remember to designate a back up for each person in the team.

Mock Drills and Dry Runs
After your business continuity plan is ready you need to check if it really works. A dry run will tell you if it is really effective and also point out to loose ends, if any, that you can fix before the actual emergency.

Don’t forget a debrief
In case you do end up using your business continuity plan, make sure you do a debrief. It will help you determine the effectiveness of your plan. The brief should focus on identifying the losses you incurred from the disaster, the time taken for implementation of the business continuity plan, the key positives of implementation of your plan and also offer suggestions, if any for improvement. Irrespective of the size of your business, business continuity planning is indispensable. Bigger companies often have their own staff (IT as well as non-IT) for business continuity planning, but for SMBs to have their own planning team can be a bit of a strain on their resources. Consider teaming up with a MSP who is experienced in disaster recovery planning, so you don’t cut corners now to regret later.