Business continuity is a practice often used by giant corporations to ensure their survival in the face of a crisis. However, business continuity can also work very well on a much more limited scale, protecting the interests of much smaller companies. To help you understand how below we list some of the most important benefits that business continuity can offer to your locally operating business.
Business continuity can help you lower the duration of dangerous disruptions and reduce the losses associated with them. It might also enable you to maintain good relations with your clients during a crisis and decrease customer attrition. Moreover, business continuity might also prevent a catastrophic loss of data. But perhaps most importantly, well-implemented business continuity will make it easier to protect the lives of your employees when an accident happens.
Read on and learn why business continuity is worth it, even for local companies!
What is Business Continuity?
Business continuity is a set of processes, policies, and procedures designed to help organizations keep their operations running in the face of disruptive events. Disruptive events can include anything from natural disasters, such as earthquakes and floods, to criminal activities, such as cyberattacks and terrorism.
Organizations often use business continuity plans (BCPs) to minimize the impact of such events. BCPs typically specify how an organization should respond to a crisis and keep its operations running while the problem is ongoing. Business continuity plans can be designed manually, but the process is much more straightforward if you use a comprehensive business continuity programme.
BC Helps You Deal With Dangerous Disruptions
The first and most obvious benefit of business continuity is that it can help you lower the duration of dangerous disruptions. This is possible with a well-designed business continuity plan that is regularly updated and tested.
When a crisis strikes, you will know exactly what needs to be done in order to keep your operations running. This will help you minimize downtime and get your business back on track as quickly as possible.
This also means that your financial losses will be more minor, as you will be able to resume your operations quickly. In some cases, you might even be able to avoid losses altogether.
For example, your restaurant’s business continuity effort might take into account the sudden losses of power and call for having an emergency generator on standby. This way, you can keep your business running even if the power is out for several days.
BC Might Help You Maintain Good Customer Relations
Another significant benefit of business continuity is that it might help you maintain good relations with your customers in trying times.
Imagine that a social media crisis hits your local business. A well-designed business continuity plan will tell you exactly what to do to mitigate the damage. This might include making a public apology translated into several languages (here you can find translation services in NYC), providing refunds or compensations, or even offering coupons to encourage customers to stick with your brand.
If you are able to quickly and effectively deal with the crisis, your customers will be more likely to remain loyal to your brand. This is especially important for local businesses, as their customer base is often much smaller than that of larger companies and the relationships are way more personal.
BC Can Help You Decrease Customer Attrition
Business continuity can also help you decrease customer attrition. When an accident or disaster strikes, many local companies are forced to close their doors for an extended period of time. This often leads to a significant decrease in customer loyalty and a migration to nearby rivals.
If you have a well-designed business continuity plan in place, you will have better chances of avoiding such a scenario. You might even be able to keep your doors open, even if only for a limited number of hours each day. This will help you maintain your customer base and avoid the costly process of having to win them back.
BC Might Help You Prevent a Catastrophic Loss of Data
Another important advantage of having a business continuity plan is that it might help you prevent a significant loss of data.
Businesses are very susceptible to data loss. This is especially true for local companies, which often lack the resources to effectively back it up. If a significant loss of data were to occur, it could have devastating financial and reputational effects on your business.
Business continuity can help you avoid it. For example, you might have a policy in place that requires employees to regularly back up their data in a cloud. You might also have an off-site storage solution for your most important data. This way, even if your office is flooded, retrieving everything vital will last hours at most.
BC Helps Protect Lives
Perhaps most importantly, business continuity can help you protect the lives of your employees and your own. Consider the following scenario: suddenly, a fire starts in your office. If you have a business continuity plan, people will know exactly what needs to be done to get everyone out safely. That’s because a good BCP will include regular fire and evacuation drills, as well as first aid courses.
It will also call for having an emergency contact list that includes, the names and phone numbers of all employees. This way, you will be able to quickly check on everyone and make sure that they are safe.
But business continuity can help you protect your employees in other ways, too. For example, you might have a plan for dealing with robbery or working remotely in an emergency.
Conclusion
As you can see, there are many good reasons to implement business continuity in your local business. Business continuity can help you deal with dangerous disruptions and minimize their total financial impact. It can also enable you to maintain good relations with your clients, reduce customer attrition during a crisis and prevent a significant loss of data.
Plus, business continuity can help you protect the lives of your employees. If you are looking for a way to improve your local business and make it safer and more robust, business continuity is definitely worth considering. As the old adage goes, ‘better safe than sorry!
