Why most business continuity plans fail (and how to make yours succeed)

Pop quiz! Do you know the top three causes of a prolonged outage?

If you guessed, “weather events, utility failures, and human security,” then you’ve just earned yourself a metaphorical A+.

These types of events are widely different in how and why they occur, and yet the results are largely the same: critical business operations go down and you lose revenue, data, and reputation.

In the event of an outage, you’ll quickly find backing up your data isn’t enough. You need a comprehensive business continuity plan that covers every inch of your processes and operations. Otherwise, your outage will last longer than you can afford.

While many organizations think they have a plan in place, the real deal is often much more comprehensive than they realized.

What too many organizations get wrong about business continuity

Another quiz question (last one, we promise): what’s the first thing your organization should do to prepare your business continuity plan?

If you answered, “back up data to the cloud,” then unfortunately that A+ just downgraded to an A-.

Many organizations fixate on backing up their data, often to the cloud. And while data backups are an important factor of your overall business continuity and disaster recovery plans, you can’t call it a job well done just because that upload bar reached 100%.

Think about it: when your backups are dependent on the cloud, then your data recovery is contingent on your ability to get your organization back online and connected to a third-party server. So, how do you get back online? How long will it take to retrieve your data backups if a loss occurs? And what do you do if the interruption affects not just your organization, but your cloud, too?

Business continuity is an expansive, comprehensive plan that encompasses every aspect of your organization. But don’t worry – developing your plan won’t have you pinning incomprehensible webs of red thread to a corkboard like in the movies. Your swift path to recovery starts in just four digestible steps.

The 4 steps to building your business continuity plan

Developing your business continuity plan requires an understanding of recovery time objective (RTO), recovery point objective (RPO), and maximum tolerated downtime (MTD). Each of these metrics will influence your plan as you define risks and perform your business impact analysis.

RTO: Your expected downtime when an outage occurs.

RPO: The maximum amount of data loss your organization can tolerate.

MTD: The absolute maximum amount of time your organization can stay down before serious consequences occur.

With these metrics in mind, here are the four steps you can take to build your business continuity plan:

1. Define your business continuity team

Simply put, you cannot do this on your own. You need a team of business continuity champions who will create and maintain business continuity governance, ensuring your plan is comprehensive, executed properly, and updated as needed over time.

This team can include existing business continuity owners, your disaster recovery team, business impact analysis team, and those responsible for your center of excellence (COE).

2. Inventory your business processes

All too often, organizations focus on their applications and data while overlooking their processes.

For example, you don’t rely solely on an application to process an online order. What is the process of a customer visiting your website? How do they make a transaction? How does that transaction occur? How does the order get picked at your warehouse? How is that pick loaded into the truck, shipped, and delivered?

Take inventory of all your business processes. You’ll quickly find most, if not all your processes are interconnected. To ensure complete continuity after an outage, all your processes must be accounted for. Otherwise, overlooked teams, processes, and applications can stay inoperable far longer than you intend.

3. Establish your RTOs, RPOs, and MTDs

Through a Business Impact Analysis, define your RTOs, RPOs, and MTDs enabling you to more realistically visualize the impact of a hypothetical outage and prepare a recovery strategy that meets or exceeds your metrics.

Take note of any compliance, audit requirements, or contracts that would define your MTD. Failing to meet these demands during an outage could result in significant financial or legal consequences.

4. Build your communication plan

When an outage occurs, you can’t second-guess when and how you communicate, both internally and externally. Determine who within your business continuity team is responsible for this communication, then work with them to define when you declare an outage, how you reach on-site, hybrid, and remote employees, and when you declare the outage is resolved.

Take the guesswork out of planning with SHI

When you and your team build out your business continuity plan, experiment with creating workflow process trees. Go through various scenarios and proactively determine whether those would trigger your business continuity plan.

Ask yourself: what is the risk of an outage that lasts five minutes? A half hour? An hour? A half day or more? Ideate scenarios that last those hypothetical durations and determine what you need to do to meet or beat your RTO while staying below your RPO.

Importantly, remember that while business continuity is an essential part of your practice, its planning shouldn’t demand sleepless nights or frustration. If you’re finding yourself overwhelmed with the business continuity process, we can help take the load off your back and bring clarity and guidance to your team.

Through our business impact analysis and business continuity and disaster recovery planning services, we tap into our industry-specific experience to provide recommendations, planning assistance, and next step advisory.

Together, we’ll:

1. Define your team.
2. Inventory your processes.
3. Establish your RTOS, RPOs, and MTDs.
4. Build your communication plan.

Together, prepare your organization to overcome otherwise disastrous outages and interruptions.

To start your business continuity journey with SHI or learn more about how we can help, contact our experts today.