Ensuring continuity in the face of change
“During the renovation, sales will continue as usual”. Who doesn't know it; it's the short explanation of Business Continuity Management (BCM). Ensuring that normal business operations continue during impactful changes. A renovation causes noise and dust, but you don't want customers to be bothered so much that they stay away. So you make an impact analysis beforehand and determine what measures are necessary to mitigate these types of risks.
What is continuity management?
In general, the core idea behind continuity management is to increase a company's resilience to identify risks in advance and plan for emergencies to prevent or mitigate operational disruptions.
Why focus on continuity management?
Your first concern is that the business can continue as usual. You don't want to miss out on income or lose customers. If you have to close your store for three weeks, your customers will shop elsewhere and discover new suppliers they would never have ended up in otherwise.
Continuity management also makes your organization agile to process failures and setbacks. If you know in advance what risks you run, you can make a plan to deal with them. This way, you'll be back on track more quickly through a crisis.
You can also consider the importance of your employees. Continuity plans can ensure employee safety in the event of emergencies, such as a fire or extreme weather.
Your customers, suppliers and investors also have an interest in having your continuity in order. It gives them the confidence that you won't be inactive unnecessarily when there is a major disruption.
In some sectors, continuity management is even mandatory to comply with legal or contractual requirements.
So plenty of reasons to take continuity seriously and plan.
Unplanned and planned continuity
As a company, you can make continuity plans for unplanned situations. For example, a bank continuously backs up transaction data so that it can switch to a secondary system if the primary IT infrastructure fails. A logistics company plans alternative distribution routes and cooperation with other carriers in advance, so that delivery can continue even if certain routes are closed due to a severe storm.
In addition to unplanned risks, there are also planned situations where risks play a role. Specifically, this is the case with change management. Continuity management (BCM) and management of change (MOC) are often inextricably linked. Every major change generates risks that it is wise to identify and mitigate in advance.
Identifying and mitigating risks is a process that must be properly organized. After all, mitigating risks usually means taking control measures. These measures must be implemented and only when you are sure that this has been done sufficiently can you speak of a mitigated risk. Sometimes it is not possible to fully mitigate risks, in which cases you would like to know what your residual risk is.
Processes such as risk assessment, implementing control measures and checking whether measures are being implemented require a professional approach. In this approach, the right software can support you in identifying and managing risk and continuity management. The ISO2HANDLE platform offers you every opportunity to arrange these things properly.
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