Unexpected events can occur and stall business operations. Having a business continuity strategy can go a long way in ensuring that we mitigate risks and minimize losses in the event of a disaster. It creates capabilities that help prevent and respond to disruptive events, thereby minimizing downtime, interruption of operations, and financial loss. Here we will look at it from a broader perspective, including various business continuity strategy options we can employ.
Mitigation Strategies
Here it is all about being proactive to prevent a disaster before it happens. Businesses in Dubai and Abu Dhabishould take stock of their preparedness once in a while. This is done by carrying out a risk assessment to identify threats that can potentially affect the business. Steps should then be taken to prevent the occurrence or to put measures that would lessen their impact.
- Avoidance
This entails avoiding a potentially risky business activity or establishing policies that can help the business foresee and avoid risky situations.
- Reduction
In many cases, we find that it is impossible to avoid some risks in our businesses. We can, however, reduce the probability of their occurrence or reduce their severity. One way is to deal with the root cause of the unwanted risk and try to reduce the impact when the disaster happens. Diversification can also help spread risk, thus minimize it to an acceptable level.
- Transference
Here the strategy is to shift the burden of risk to another party. If there is a risk we perceive to be a threat to business continuity, we find ways of passing the risk away so that it does not affect business operations.
Business Continuity Recovery Strategies
When a disaster occurs, it is imperative to move with speed so as to minimize damage and quickly get business operations up and running again. If we do not act promptly, a lot of things can go wrong in our businesses. Recovery strategies entail conducting a business impact analysis and then with Recovery Time Objective (RTO). When this is done, we then start restoring various business operations to an acceptable minimum threshold.
- Focus on regaining what has been lost.
- Think about people, processes, technology, facilities, equipment, and records.
- What can current capabilities do to help in the recovery process?
- Depending on the prescribed RTO, we ask ourselves what the organization has lost and what can be recovered to enable the business to carry out critical functions?
- Outline requirements that need to be met to be able to recover critical functions quickly.
We can leverage information technology in business continuity plans. Cloud computing can play a critical role in data recovery. Using cloud-based apps and storing data in the cloud is much safer. Cloud backup is also another capability that can be used. Organizations back up and store data on remote servers. Data can be restored quickly and is not affected by local outages or weather.
Business Continuity Plans
We develop effective business continuity plans to ensure that business operations are up and running. These include making arrangements for remote working, relocation, and IT disaster recovery.
Testing the Strategy
After we operationalize the business continuity strategies and solutions, we then assess its effectiveness and make changes where necessary.
