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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
If your company isn't prepared for business disruptions, then be prepared for the consequences because many organizations that suffer serious disturbances don't rebound. A four-step action plan will put you on track to create, maintain, and implement responses to interruptions.
If your business is not prepared to handle disruption or disaster, then it will suffer. It may not even survive. It takes a bold approach to ensure protection in today's ever-shifting marketplace.
According to the book Management Information Systems for the Information Age, only 6 percent of companies affected by the loss of all company records survive long-term. You may have planned for data loss and recovery in the case of a disruption in operations since company records are a major priority for all organizations. But protecting records is just one part of resilience planning.
Information technology, physical security and structure, operations processes, and considerations for the supply chain are all factors, as are personnel. For example, there may be a plan for employees at your organizations to communicate if land-line and cell phone service is disabled due to a disaster. But if employees can't get to work because of structural damage to their offices or they can't use inaccessible roads or borders have been closed, your work force will be greatly reduced in a situation in which you need them the most.
The concept of business resilience is still relatively new. Except for those companies that have learned to expect continuous business disruptions, many are still struggling with the idea. There is a tendency to look for the cause of the disruption and tackle survival that way, which can be helpful. But it is not as important as other activities - such as researching how companies with frequently disrupted supply chains plan ahead and recover or determining how to add redundancy to operations without driving up costs.
With the following four steps, you can produce a plan that will address these concerns and allow your company to be resilient.
Step 1: Prepare for the plan
The process of developing a business resilience plan starts with the creation of a planning team. The makeup of this team is critical and should include members from all functional areas in the company because vulnerability...