The world keeps changing - and it is clearly riskier; we are starting to see a lot more risks than in the past.
Business interruptions such as site closures due to fire, natural disasters, transit strikes and severe weather significantly impact the productivity of employees and in turn, financially impact the company. Therefore, continuity and security should be uppermost in the minds of executives who must ensure that their company can withstand any kind of event.
Companies avoid planning for disasters. It's human nature. But when a company thinks about what it would cost a small- or medium-sized enterprise to be without power or IT systems for 24 hours, it makes good business sense to plan for the worst. To keep your business up and running if disaster strikes, you should avoid the following common mistakes.
1. Put it off until tomorrow. With the amount of day-to-day "fire fighting" that most growing businesses do, it's easy to procrastinate on tackling projects like disaster recovery and security planning. A recent IBM study of more than 1,200 medium-sized companies confirmed this. Nearly 70 per cent agreed that IT disaster-recovery capabilities were essential, but less than 25 per cent were confident that what they had was complete. The good news is that today's affordable and feature-rich services, software and hardware technologies mean that businesses can start small, establish a base level of disaster recovery, and build on it over time.
2. Only big companies can afford it. This is untrue. Business-continuity planning is not a luxury that only mega-businesses can afford. Without any business-continuity structure in place, a small- or medium-sized business risks losing revenue and brand reputation that it really can't afford to lose. One area often overlooked is continuous data access. Without it, you can't serve your customers or partners. Backup storage within your primary place of business is one place to start. But if there's a power outage, you can still ensure continuous availability as long as you have protected information in an offsite location - ideally far away from where you do business. New managed-services models and cost-effective offsite backup and recovery mean that peace of mind is available for companies of any size.
3. It's an IT problem. It's more than that - it's a business problem. Protecting your data and getting your systems online again is crucial, but don't forget about the people who use those systems. When a tornado touches down or a blackout shuts down the city, your employees need to know what to do. Make sure your plans address employee communications, working remotely, and prioritise the employees that need access to your core business systems first.
4. Plan only for natural disasters. People often picture big, headline-making events like floods or hurricanes when they think of disaster recovery. But a complete business-continuity plan also anticipates malicious disasters and productivity killers like spam, computer viruses or data theft.
For example, a regional manufacturer found itself inundated with spam and e-mail viruses that took each employee an average of 20 minutes a day to remove. With only minor modifications to its e-mail servers and firewalls, the manufacturer took advantage of an e-mail filtering solution hosted offsite. Now spam and virus e-mail no longer reach the company's network, giving the company back an estimated 2,500 hours of labour per year.
5. You have to do it yourself. Only if you want to. You can start by carrying out a basic risk assessment and appointing an employee to write a simple, common-sense policy. Companies interested in assessing their readiness for business continuity and resiliency can undergo a five-minute self-assessment at http://www-07.ibm.com/th/bcr-onlinetest (in Thai language). But if you find this whole subject too overwhelming or time-consuming, get help. Bring in a local service provider to help you develop and implement a plan and any processes or IT capabilities you need.
Stop for a minute and think about your business, viewed from an altitude of 50,000 feet. How would you fare in a disaster? A business continuity plan is like life insurance; you hope you never have to use it, but if you do, it's invaluable.
Parnsiree Amatayakul is country manager for global technology services at IBM Thailand.