Tools vs Plans
Everyone wants a good plan. Do you want a good plan for dealing with business interruptions? Would you feel safer with your business future if you had a plan for dealing with any type of business interruption? Helping our clients develop great plans for the unknown is the whole point of Everyday Business Resilience Group!
But, plans are useless if you don't have the tools to execute them. Tools provide the foundation for any worthwhile plan. Having a broad array of tools at your business' disposal gives you the freedom to course correct your plan no matter what happens. So, while helping our clients develop great plans for Business Continuity and business growth initiatives is our goal at EBRG, our driving purpose is to equip our clients with the tools they need to be confident and self sufficient for their future, no matter what happens.
Let's look at the current crisis impacting businesses across the United States, and see how having a great tool set, and the knowledge to use it, would have, and still can, help your business thrive in times of stress.
COIVD-19, Protests, and Civil Unrest
Did the pandemic catch you by surprise? Did you find yourself wondering what to do next, who to reach out to, and where to point your efforts? What about the protests and civil unrests we're all seeing in all of our communities as we struggle with the challenges of systemic racism in our society? Two very different causes for business interruptions. Two causes that are difficult, if not nearly impossible, to predict with any accuracy.
What if you already had tools in place for other potential situations, that could have been readily applied to the issues created by the pandemic? If you had processes and responses prepared for any of the following situations, they could have been repurposed to your pandemic response quickly and easily:
Fire
Seasonal illness spread such as the flu and stomach bugs
Flooding
Severe weather (hurricanes, tornados, thunderstorms, drought, etc)
Why could preparing for those other types of risks help you in a pandemic? Because when we dig a little deeper, we find that it's not the cause of the interruption that matters, it's what the interruption does to your business processes!
Here at EBRG, the first step of our Business Continuity Planning process is taking clients through the impacts of interruptions to their key business processes. Because it's the process we want to make resilient, and processes can be impacted by any number of different causes. As long as we know how to protect the process in the first place, and how to quickly get it back up and operational, it doesn't matter what it was that caused the process interruption, as the tools for keeping the process going are still applicable!
For example:
If your business is prepared to relocate or work remotely if your primary work space is unavailable, you are prepared for a wide variety of risks and causes for business interruptions.
If you have systems that are backed up in multiple locations, with easy accessibility from portable devices, you are prepared for a wide variety of risks and causes for business interruptions.
If you have hard copies of critical process instructions, client contact information, and vendor contact information, you are prepared for a wide variety of risks and causes for business interruptions.
And if you've tested these systems and processes to understand what happens when they are interrupted, and used those learnings to improve your preparedness plans, you are prepared for a wide variety of risks and causes of business interruptions.
Remember, your mechanic doesn't buy a new set of wrenches for every car they work on and every repair they face!
If building resilient tools into your business operations are top of mind for your business at this time, give us a call soon to ensure your place early in the economic recovery!