4 Reasons You Need Business Continuity Planning

What happens if a natural disaster keeps all of our employees at home for days — or weeks. Meanwhile, your key services are hampered due to damage sustained at your office. How are you going to contact all of your employees — not to mention customers? What will be the most efficient ways to put the pieces of your business back together, following an emergency?

This is business continuity planning. Good business continuity planning should look at the business as a whole — with a goal to support business resilience. Business continuity describes a complete solution for backup and disaster recovery. A business continuity strategy will protect data on-premises in physical and virtual servers and in the cloud. Whether data is on servers or in SaaS applications, it needs to be backed up. Business continuity goes a step further and offers you the ability to restore your data, which is termed disaster recovery.

Whether a business is faced with a natural disaster, or a cyber-attack, strong business continuity practices will have you up and running in minutes, particularly business continuity solutions that leverage the hybrid cloud – guaranteeing a quicker restore time. The severity and length of business disruptions caused by any disaster can vary considerably. To be prepared for extended or permanent facility damage, businesses should maintain continuous off-site backup of data, applications, and server images, as well as have arrangements in place for re-routing incoming calls to an alternative site and/or to employees’ mobile phones. Data is essential for all types of organizations today, so ensuring access to applications and data following a disaster is critical.

Still, it’s just one piece of the business continuity puzzle. Evaluating your company’s ability to restore IT operations can be a good starting point for company-wide business continuity efforts. In fact, many business continuity planning efforts start by conducting a business impact analysis or risk assessment — these studies can reveal weaknesses in your organization’s ability to continue operations that go far beyond IT.

What are 4 reasons you need business continuity planning?

1. Downtime is really, really, expensive: If your employees or customers lose access to business-critical applications and data, there will be a direct impact on productivity and revenue. While this sounds obvious, many organizations do not consider the actual costs of downtime. Some modern business continuity products offer the ability to run applications from backup instances of virtual servers. This allows users to continue operations while primary application servers are restored. Choosing a business continuity solution aimed at reducing downtime makes good business sense.

2. Data backup alone is not enough — not nearly enough! You’d be hard pressed to find a business today that doesn’t conduct some form of data backup. But, what happens if a flood wipes out your primary and backup servers? Sending a copy of data offsite for disaster recovery should also be considered essential. Historically, this meant sending tapes to a secondary location or tape vault. As previously mentioned, modern business continuity products can run applications from backup instances of virtual servers, and some can extend this capability to the cloud. The ability to run applications in the cloud while onsite infrastructure is restored is widely considered to be a game changer for disaster recovery. As CEO, you don’t want yesterday’s backup technology. Backup and business continuity are not one in the same. Your business needs both — all the time.

3. Disasters actually do happen — and they most times are not natural! Not every disaster is broadcasted on news and weather channels. Most IT downtime is a result of common, every day actions like accidental (or even intentional) data deletion, damage to computer hardware and poor security habits. For example, a CompTIA study found that 94% of respondents routinely log into public wifi, in spite of security risks. And, 69% of this group accesses work-related data over public wifi. A ransomware attack or virus can halt operations just as easily as a tornado or a power surge. These disasters are typically a result of human error, which in unpreventable.

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4. Business continuity impacts everybody — especially your customers! Data is essential for all types of organizations today, so ensuring access to applications and data following a disaster is critical. But it’s just one piece of the business continuity puzzle. Evaluating your business’ ability to restore IT operations can be a good starting point for company-wide business continuity efforts. Good business continuity and disaster recovery planning should look at the business as a whole – with a goal to develop business resilience. In fact, many business continuity planning efforts start by conducting a business impact analysis or risk assessment—these studies can reveal weaknesses in your organization’s ability to continue operations that go far beyond IT.

Keep in mind, failure to protect your business from human error, hardware failure and/or natural disasters can be detrimental and impact every single stakeholder. Implementing a business continuity and disaster recovery plan will help you sleep a little better at night.

Source: https://smallbiztrends.com
Image Credit: Shuttershock




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Strategic Planning: Act Now and Jumpstart Business in 2019

If you expect to jumpstart business in the new year, you have the next three weeks, period, to plan and strategize.

But it’s barely November, you’re thinking; there’s plenty of time for strategic planning. Right? Wrong.

In 21 days we will be knee-deep in Thanksgiving festivities. Depending on your traditions, this may mean massive grocery shopping, defrosting a turkey, a whirlwind house cleaning, fall decorations, the big dinner itself, cleaning once again, and the start of serious shopping, with Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday.

Then, December and party season strike, with gatherings of your business associates, co-workers, vendors, clients, distant relatives, neighbors, friends and probably even some people you don’t know very well. There are kids’ recitals and pageants, special concerts and television specials. And more shopping, wrapping and decorating.

This flurry of activity flows seamlessly into Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and after Christmas sales, followed by New Year’s Eve, and New Year’s Day with its football extravaganzas, more parties and more food.

Before you blink, it’s mid-January or possibly almost Valentine’s Day, and you’re scrambling to set a strategic plan, which you probably won’t be able to launch until March at the earliest. And one sixth to one quarter of the year has been lost.

Don’t be left behind.

Set aside time now, to think and plan. You may believe you can’t spare the time, but indeed, this brief window is your best opportunity.

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7 Steps to Jumpstart Business in 2019:

• Start now. You don’t have time to procrastinate.
• Review the past year. What has worked well? What was a disappointment? Take an inventory of wins and losses.
• Consider trends. What has changed, and what changes do you foresee for the future? What can you do to take advantage of these?
• Set goals. What exactly do you want to accomplish in the new year? Know where you want to be at this time, next year.
• What are your assets? What can you use to reach your goals? What else do you need? How will you acquire the things you need?
• Set specific tasks which will take you from where you are to where you want to be. Set deadlines, and make a commitment to meeting them.
• Take action. You don’t have to wait until January; anything you do now will put you further ahead of the game!

Take a deep breath, focus, and set your sights on your 2019 goals. Get ahead of the competition. Make your plans, set strategies and tasks, and move to jumpstart business on January 2nd!

Source: https://www.business2community.com

ABOUT WNFP
Westchester Networking for Professionals (WNFP) is a business organization focused on providing our members and guests with an extraordinary networking experience, bringing business professionals together for the sole purpose of generating new relationships and developing new business opportunities. Not a member, learn how you can become a member and join this awesome group of professionals to connect and grow your business.

Stay Connected with WNFP!

5 Ways Growing Fast Can Cripple Your Business (and How to Fix It)

Business growth is a sure sign of success. Ergo, the faster your business expands, the more successful you must be, right?

But in the midst of all the potential and excitement promised by a wildly successful business, owners often neglect to consider the drawbacks of rapid expansion. That is, until they are swirling in the whirlwind.

The truth is, fast business growth isn't all popularity and financial bliss. There are numerous unexpected pitfalls that could stunt your growth before you even get a chance to enjoy the prosperity. Here are some of the most common growing pains you should watch out for.

1. The Unraveling of a Standardized Process
As you begin to rapidly grow, you'll need to improvise to meet increased demand. The higher demand climbs, the less time you'll have to redesign workflows to account for volume and new employees.

At this point, your old processes will stop working effectively. This is right about the time businesses enter a state of free fall.

The Fix

• Start by addressing operations that directly affect customer experience (like ordering and order-processing systems).
• Turn away customers if you must. Don't over-promise and under-deliver.
• Leverage technologies that will help streamline and automate. This will free your management and employees to focus on more pressing areas of business.

2. The Dissipation of Your Company Culture
When you grow fast and hire quickly, you run the risk of losing the spark that ignited your explosive growth.

Businesses often bring on too many contractors to keep up with growing demand, and these people may not be as invested in the company and end up walking away with insider intel. And demand is so great, there is no time for proper training and onboarding.

It's "sink or swim," and company culture often gets compromised in the riptide.

The Fix

• Define yourself. Is your company young and trendy, or professional and sophisticated?
• Expound your mission statement and values.
• Set cultural expectations for your organization.
• Build enthusiasm behind your company's mission and values. Lead by example.
• Do not hire outside your company culture. Make adequate time for hiring and recruit the right people.

3. The Downfall of Great Customer Service
Rapid growth means less face time with customers. It also means an onslaught of new customers who easily distract businesses from their current customers--you know, the patrons who helped them get where they are today, and are fully capable of making or breaking your reputation.

The Fix

• Set a company-wide standard of excellence in customer service.
• Address customer issues and questions quickly and thoughtfully.
• Actively ask for feedback from customers.
• Listen closely to customers and use intel to refine operations.

4. High Employee Turnover
Fast business growth will undoubtedly test the endurance and loyalty of your staff. For them, your success means facing a lot of changes. If they feel over-worked and under-valued, you risk veteran employees jumping ship faster than you can replace them

The Fix

• Incentivize hard work; give bonuses and positive reinforcement.
• Invite them to be a part of the process. Ask for their input as you reshape your brand and processes.
• Invest in your employees. Equip them with the tools they need to succeed.

5. Spatial Challenges
As you hire more employees, expand departments and prepare to meet heightened demands, you will inevitably outgrow your space.

But the answer isn't necessarily to expand office space. First, you need to understand how your employees are using their workspace, and whether all areas of your office space are being optimally utilized.

The Fix

• Listen to your employees and the requests they make.
• Be present on the floor.
• Utilize space management software to monitor employee usage of space and assets, and to forecast future needs.
• Expand accordingly.

With the right tools and practical knowledge, it is entirely possible to grow your business with grace. Keep these pitfalls in mind so you have the insight necessary to navigate your business in the right direction--even at full speed.

Source: http://www.inc.com/
Image Credit: Getty Images

ABOUT WNFP
Westchester Networking for Professionals (WNFP) is a business networking association dedicated to helping small businesses and entrepreneurs develop, expand and grow. We offer affordable opportunities to help create a positive impact and advancement in your business interests and personal quality of life to take you to the next level.
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