Business continuity planning is essential for your business to have any kind of longevity.

Could your business continue to deliver in the event of a global pandemic? What about if there were periods of civil unrest? It may be unlikely, but it’s not impossible. Could your business survive in the face of negative publicity? Or a cyber attack? These are much more likely scenarios and its times like these having a Business Continuity Plan can be the difference between business survival or insolvency.

What is business continuity?

Business continuity is planning for an organisation to respond to unanticipated incidents and to continue business operations at an acceptable level. An effective business continuity plan covers everything from the identification of potential events and how the business will deal with the challenge, right down to its ability to continue delivering to its customers.

Events that can impact business continuity

There are a vast number of things that could impact business continuity.

A recent example that threatened the continuation of many businesses… and called time on many more, was the global pandemic. It was those businesses that were agile and able to respond quickly to facilitate government requirements and revised customer expectations that succeeded.

Other events that could impact business continuity include natural disasters such as floods, earthquakes and wildfires; technological failures such as power outages, cyber-attacks, data breaches and hardware failures; human events such as terrorist attacks or sabotage; supply chain disruptions such as supplier bankruptcy or border closures such as the Suez Canal blockage seen in 2021. All these events should be survivable for businesses, providing there’s an effective continuity plan in place.

How to plan for business continuity

Business continuity isn’t straightforward and the risks of any of these kinds of events are diverse.

They can result in work lost to competitors, health and safety liabilities, HR challenges, your ability to continue to manufacture and deliver products, your ability to keep your data safe and to remain compliant with legislation – even your ability to meet staff expectations.

So, when it comes to planning for business continuity, it helps to have someone who has done it before. Someone who can guide you through the challenges, the risks and how to resolve them.

Business continuity with ASL always begins with a risk assessment. This will be based on your existing Business Continuity Plan and will involve an in-depth assessment of the technology that you have in place.

From this, we’ll create a report recommending measures you could take to safeguard your business from such events.

We’ll then guide you through the execution of the recommendations to ensure you have a robust and resilient business as you move forward.

This could involve measures such as the integration of SharePoint to protect against human error or moving to ASL Flex to enable your business to scale up or down as required. Whatever the measures are, our knowledgeable consultants will help you put them in place.

How ASL can help you prepare and plan for business continuity

With an up-to-date business continuity plan, it’s more likely that, when faced with adversity your business will survive. You may even find yourself with a competitive advantage as you move in an agile manner to meet new expectations or market conditions.

To find out more about ASL and how we can help you build a business continuity plan robust enough to carry your business through adversity and ensure long-term survival, chat with our sales team on 0345 207 7000. Alternatively, contact us using Ava, our new intelligent assistant.