Why is business continuity planning important and the solutions you need

Does your company have a plan or system like this: A fast-acting system of preventative and recovery steps for when a potential threat hits the company, personnel, or company assets (Investopedia, 2021)? This is the definition of “business continuity planning.” Is your plan able to notify employees who work from anywhere (WFX)? Can it adapt as a crisis like COVID-19 unfolds, a power outage hits, or during a cyberattack?

If not, or you have doubts, questioning whether your business continuity plan could handle any of these real-life examples, it’s time to look at what you need and why.

Why you need business continuity planning

Thousands of events and incidents threaten businesses every day. As the saying goes, while the chances are low, they’re never zero. In fact, many threats like cyberattacks and severe weather are on the rise.

Coastal offices are always in jeopardy of tsunamis, hurricanes, and rogue waves. Many office buildings bordering the Pacific Ocean are at risk of earthquakes. Any organization connected to the internet could be hacked. And almost every company has experienced the long-lasting public health emergency of COVID-19 that affected the globe in just weeks.

Every company needs to be prepared with a business continuity plan. Your plan and the communication systems that it uses need to help protect the company, its personnel, and its assets.

Create your plan with communication in mind

Emergency preparedness plans abound, FEMA for example, provide full-fledged business continuity templates. Without a planned and tested communications system, your company is risking employees, assets, partners, and clout.

Communications should play an integral role in business continuity planning and include keystone steps like:

• Directing people to safety
• Defining which systems are secure to use in an emergency
• Identifying how to alert and notify people
• Communicating expectations and frequency of updates
• Governing information flow to and from a trusted source
• Telling people how to access information

These touchpoints create a huge difference when disaster strikes. They can be the difference between life and casualty, data loss and recovery, or customer satisfaction and a one-star review.

The communication solutions your business continuity plan needs

Pre-emptive detection

When assessing your tools, it’s best to look for robust automation. A tool that can monitor and detect threats before they have a chance to negatively impact operations. Services like IntelePeer’s can track communication patterns and redirect overwhelming numbers of calls. It can also notify a call center’s manager when call queues grow too large. By rerouting calls to a secondary or even tertiary call center, customers won’t notice a delay in service. This redistribution can be based on call volume, location, or need.

Agility to swiftly communicate

Whatever your business continuity plan, it must be as adaptable and fast as changes happen. IntelePeer’s Emergency Planning solution can create and send notifications in minutes.

A low-code app can automatically follow up if employees in a crisis area don’t respond. The tool’s ease of use helps crisis teams or non-developers create and send communications fast and on a reliable network with redundancies built in.

Connection to critical systems

Have a database of employees, customers, or partners? Include them in your planning and connect them to a business continuity tool for your emergency communications. With this combo, you can communicate updates as fast as you can send them.

IntelePeer’s Managed Solutions service can help connect CRMs, human resource, and vendor databases, so your communication systems always has updated contact information. Have an idea for something more advanced than one of our pre-built flows? Managed Solutions is the way to go for advanced APIs and workflows.

Protect your company, employees, and assets from external threats with a business continuity plan that includes the right communication tool for your company. Acquire or switch to an agile communication system that helps prevent and manage emergencies before, during, and as they happen.

Learn more about how IntelePeer’s Emergency Planning app can help enhance your business continuity plan. Though we hope companies don’t have to experience a crisis, we know it’s more and more likely for organizations around the world. It’s best to prepare today.