Disasters or unforeseen crises pose a serious threat to business operations and can prevent organizations from meeting the needs of their customers and hitting their revenue targets, while also potentially causing damage to their brands.
The best way to avoid being caught off guard and to enhance organizational resilience is to develop a business continuity strategy. Below, we’ll take a closer look at business continuity strategies and the steps you can take to create a solid plan for your company.
What is Business Continuity?
Business continuity is an organization’s preparedness to perform essential operations after a disruption. Events like cyber attacks, prolonged power outages, natural disasters, equipment failures, sudden employee resignations, and health crises like the COVID-19 pandemic could cause significant disruption.
When it comes to the continuity of a business, the strategy you put in place should clearly define the steps necessary to respond to and recover from disruptions and other emergencies. These plans often leverage technology, such as virtualization, emergency notification systems, and resilient communication tools to provide the necessary support.
Why You Need a Business Continuity Strategy
Understanding the importance of preparedness in today’s unpredictable world is critical. Here are some key reasons to create a continuity strategy for your organization:
Keeps People Connected
A business continuity management (BCM) strategy facilitates communication between employees and leaders, especially during crises. The plan usually includes communication channels to disseminate information during disruptions. Additionally, it covers collaboration tools and remote work policies to ensure team members stay in touch.
Improves Disaster Preparedness
Did you know that about 25% of businesses don’t recover after a disaster? Implementing effective business continuity recovery strategies can prevent your company from being part of this statistic by swiftly restoring operations and allocating resources for alternative arrangements. With a disaster preparedness plan in place, you’ll also have peace of mind knowing you can face whatever comes your way, even if it’s a category 5 hurricane.
Ensures Operational Resilience
Continuity strategies boost operational resilience by providing a proactive approach to managing disruptions. The process typically involves risk identification and assessment to enable you to understand your vulnerabilities and how to work around them. What’s more, it incorporates preventative measures and emergency response plans to minimize downtime.
Safeguards Data and Intellectual Property
A continuity strategy ensures the confidentiality of data and intellectual property and safeguards them. This business continuity management strategy phase also covers reliable data and recovery procedures, secure communication channels, and useful cyber security measures. Furthermore, it includes regular audits and testing to pinpoint and eliminate vulnerabilities.
Preserves Customer Trust and Brand Reputation
With proactive crisis management, a well-thought-out and implemented business continuity plan strategy helps to maintain customer trust and loyalty. Your customers are more likely to trust you when you avail quality and dependable services while dealing with the challenges of disruption. It demonstrates your commitment to them. In addition, it will help your organization retain a positive brand reputation.
The Network Services You Need to Improve Your Business Continuity Strategy
Want to ensure the success of your Business Continuity Management (BCM) strategy? We recommend a broad range of solutions to bolster your continuity strategy and navigate disruptions, which will also improve your network’s security.
Managed SD-WAN for Network Resilience
Managed software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) services provide peak performance for demanding business applications and have built-in resilience. In addition to offering more bandwidth and integrated security, SD-WAN provides ubiquitous coverage, continuous application performance monitoring, and intelligent automation, which are important capabilities to have during a crisis. The result is business continuity. Check out this business continuity strategy example to grasp how managed SD-WAN can boost your network’s resilience during natural disasters.
Wireless Solutions for Backup and Flexibility
The right wireless connectivity solutions, including 5G and 4G LTE, will fortify your BCM strategy. These services provide easy access to the internet during sudden power failures, ensuring continuous connectivity. As a result, you can continue using essential applications to offer critical services, even in the middle of a crisis.
Specialized Tools for Crisis Management
MetTel provides two valuable specialized tools to help you manage crises by maintaining uninterrupted operations: Mobile Emergency Data & Internet Kit (MEDIK) and Single SIM solutions. The MEDIK provides a dial tone for days, even without an outlet and power, making it handy for communication during disasters. The kit also comes with cellular connectivity, a Wi-Fi access point, and support for all major carrier SIM cards.
MetTel’s Single SIM solution provides 24/7 connectivity through more than 650 carriers across the globe. It intelligently roams all available networks to find and connect to the strongest signal. This allows you to stay connected and keep track of business operations from anywhere in the world, which is particularly important when natural disasters like hurricanes or healthcare crises like the COVID-19 pandemic force you to embrace remote work.
Cloud-Based Communications for Ultimate Connectivity
Here are some recommended cloud-based tools that can help with network connectivity during times of crisis:
- Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP): Enables you to make calls over the internet to computers, landlines, and mobile phones anywhere in the world.
- Hosted PBX: Provides a sophisticated yet reliable phone system that you can include in various business continuity strategy options to eliminate the need to invest in premium call management tools.
- Unified Communications as a Service (UcaaS): A cloud delivery model that enables you to use chat, file sharing, call, and video conferencing from a single platform.
These cloud-based solutions are designed to support remote work, which may be necessary after a disaster.
Protect Your Business with MetTel
While you cannot accurately predict when the next disaster will strike, you can protect your organization with a business continuity plan and the right tools and services that will help you manage through the crisis and its aftermath. In an effort to future-proof your organization and limit disruption, managed network services can ensure your business remains operational no matter the circumstances. Adopting technologies like SD-WAN, wireless backup, and cloud-based communication enhances your organization’s capacity to stay connected and functional during a crisis.
If you have any questions about Managed SD-WAN or disaster preparedness solutions for your network, please contact us.