Business Continuity Planning – Whose Responsibility Is It?

Business continuity, crisis management, incident management, disruption planning – call it what you will – we all need to be prepared for incidents and crises. It’s the only way to protect our profits, reputations, customer relationships and staff (from excess stress!) when something goes ‘pop’.

Most businesses accept the need for plans to cope with, and recover from, disruption to their systems caused by technical failures, cyber-attacks, data breaches and the like. Usually they expect their IT teams to make these plans. They tend, though, to focus on ‘disaster recovery’ (DR) – getting data and systems up and running again in a defined timeframe. Most companies, though not all, plan for the other ‘major’ risks too – total loss of their building, catastrophic damage from a cyber-attack or other long-lasting incidents but these often focus on DR too, rather than business continuity (BC).

But what about the more likely or ‘normal’ risks – snow days, floods, power outages, flu bugs, school closures and more? Not to mention lottery syndicate wins. Who should plan for those? How can you reduce the risk and impact on your business and customers? That’s business continuity.

The customer-facing leadership, with suitable help, should be at the heart of planning for all disruption to front line services – whether that’s for a few hours or days, as in most cases, or longer. After all, the people who deal with customer issues daily will bear the brunt of any problem and should best understand the impact the issue is likely to have on customers. They should also be well placed to judge which support services will need to be in place soonest to cope with it and reduce the impact. They will also, of course, be the people with the greatest empathy for the customer. Of course, the longer the crisis lasts, the wider the team that needs to be involved, but for the most likely situations, having a customer-facing BC plan is vital.

What would you do if, for example, a builder dug up the internet cables to your office? How would you cope? How would you tell customers? How would you tell your staff? Would those plans actually work in practice? How long would the disruption last? How much would it cost you (in money and reputation)?

What if a weather event that stopped staff reaching your office? You might have ‘cloud’ and social media services, accessible from anywhere, but could your staff actually login from home? Do they know the login details? Could they access information they would need? How would they know the office was closed? Do they know their role in the plan? What if the weather event also caused power outages at their homes so their home internet didn’t work and they couldn’t charge their phones? What then? How many parents could work from home if the schools also closed?

Planning a successful business continuity strategy is complex and needs a lot of collaboration – yes, relying on the expertise of the IT team but, most importantly, with customer-facing staff too.

You’ll need to ask ‘but what if?’ a lot to create a good business continuity plan that helps your customers and protects your business reputation.  

Are you ready? Are you sure?

CsCx offers business continuity planning consultancy and advice, focussed on customer impact and protecting your business reputation. Please get in touch if you need help (email [email protected] or call +44 1793 272383).