As key stakeholders in our businesses, we owe it to ourselves to be constantly performing risk analysis. As the winter season comes to a close, the spring time brings a sense of renewal. This is a great time to take a look at the risks impacting your business operations. When we talk to business owners they usually don’t want to think about the possibilities of interruptions that could bring an operation to a stand-still and some often have the mentality of “it won’t happen to me”. This is a dangerous situation since an interruption can happen to any business, big or small. Lack of a functional recovery plan can be detrimental to your bottom line. Below is a list of some of the interruptions that have impacted businesses over the past few years:
1) Self-inflicted Outages
When we are invested in our own organizations, we can often overlook the possibility of human error in our operations. Many business continuity plans don’t account for human error interruptions and these typically aren’t revealed during testing and exercise.
2) Employee Sabotage
The job market saw historical movement in the past two years and perhaps not all for the better. Employees and employers have had to endure mask and vaccine mandates, plus working from home and unstable business environments. These stressors placed unusually high tension between labor and management. Some scorned employees took vengeance on their workplace by changing administrative passwords and locking organizations out of critical software applications.
3) Power Outages
Often we find that businesses overlook how essential electricity is to everyday operation. Improper power supply plans can bring your facility or data center to a halt.
4) Third-Party Outages
Does your business rely on third-party software? What if Salesforce, Office 365, Amazon, or Symantec experience an outage, how would that impact your business’ operation? What is your plan when they go down?
5) Natural Events
Winter storms, hurricanes, wildfires, flooding, and earthquakes just to name a few have severely impacted businesses both large and small within the past few years. Does your distribution center have a plan for tornadoes? According to a new analysis performed by First Street Foundation and Arup, retail, office and multi-unit residential properties stand to lose more than $13.5 billion in 2022 from flood damage. Can your data and facilities survive a major flood?
As business owners, we have to think of the unthinkable. An interruption to your business is uncomfortable to think about but completely necessary and by creating a business continuity plan you can lower your overall risk.
Did you read through this list and think about a specific process that may be impacted in your operation? Now is a great time to think about robust strategies that may help reduce or prevent loss of inventory, reduced productivity, property damage, and devastating revenue loss. How does your current business continuity plan stack up? Not sure where to begin or want fresh eyes to provide an analysis, contact our Business Continuity team today.