Business Continuity Planning (BCP) is rarely seen as exciting — more commonly it’s perceived as a cost and a burden to the business and its users, despite the obvious need for it given the continued occurrence of unprecedented events (Brexit, Covid & war in Ukraine). The impact is that BCP is rarely invested in and for those that need BCPs to be effective, it is rare to have the plans at their fingertips when an incident occurs.
But the perception is changing.
McKinsey state: “The world is experiencing a level of disruption and business risk not seen in generations. Some companies freeze and fail, while others innovate, advance, and even thrive. The difference is resilience.”
And Resilience is the key to a successful BCP.
Our clients are tearing up the rule book and making BCP:
- visual and engaging for the users and executives
- a competitive advantage for companies looking to thrive
BCP should share both live and living documents — often they are not. Working with a leading logistics firm, we found that they thought they had BCP covered. Yet, on closer inspection many plans were out of date, and contained people that had left the site or business.
An example they shared nicely summed up the situation:
This organisation had 20 plans across 20 sites and believed that they had BCP covered. What they found upon discovery was that they had 20 different formats, and few were accurate. 20 incomplete plans and very little standardisation in sight.
All we could say at first was wow, how had they thought it had been covered?
Then we rolled up our sleeves to dive back into our discovery sessions together, assuring them that this is a common situation, and they are not alone.
Working with Aspenify Digital apps, the impact had on our customers has been huge. That logistics company now has a common platform whereby all BCP plans are stored, reviewed, and managed. The benefit we bring them is that the Executive Board, Business Unit Director, Site Manager, and users all have a simple dashboard view with red, amber, and green status. Their CEO has the option to see in real-time, or in BCP plans. This is across all sites and third-party locations in one view that accelerates them towards holding 100% completed BCP for each location.
As the Software is so simple and efficient it is so much easier for our users to engage in the BCP process. Furthermore, we have saved hundreds of operational hours to maintain a live system by streamlining our processes.
So how does this translate into a competitive advantage? Well, there are a couple of reasons that spring to mind:
1: Cost and Operational Savings
Insurance Premiums have been significantly reduced since demonstrating enhanced visualisation and reporting of our governance.
Nearly 60% less time is spent on building and managing BCP which is a huge win for efficiency.
2: Greater ability to deliver to our clients
With enhanced BCP plans our customers are winning more business and ensuring continuity of existing contracts.
So, by changing your mindset and perception of BCP it’s possible to set-up to thrive.
Aspenify offers expert advice and solutions to help your business grow. Our unique approach in platform deployment and application development helps our customers accelerate their successes.