Best Practices For Business Continuity Planning Post CoVID-19

Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic has hit the global business community, CIOs and CEOs around the world have made rampant efforts to ensure the smooth running of critical operations with minimal disruption in customer service. Well, some of them have been able to get past the present crisis with minimum impact on their organization due to well-designed business continuity planning strategies in place. However, the situation has not improved well. Ensuring business continuity is a tough task post-COVID-19 for most businesses. 

Companies across all industries have adopted modern technologies like AR/VR cloud, Artificial Intelligence to manage different aspects of their operations as part of their business continuity planning strategy. Those who don't have well-organized IT disaster recovery infrastructure in place, are relying on IT consulting services providers to guide them navigate through the crisis while continuing operations. 

The “How-To” of Business Continuity Planning 

Business continuity planning (BCP) and disaster recovery planning are two terms often used interchangeably. But, the two are different concepts. Business continuity planning refers to the company-wide strategy of continuing operations during unforeseen situations like natural disasters, cyberattacks, and so on. It is more comprehensive than disaster recovery planning as it covers contingencies for entire business processes, assets, people, and business partners - almost every business area that might be affected. On the other hand. Disaster recovery planning is just a subset of BCP that contains recovery strategies for business IT-related disruptions in networks, servers, and more.

While proper business continuity planning has helped businesses overcome unexpected scenarios and maintain continuous operations, doing the same in a completely virtual environment of COVID-19 is challenging. 

Here are the best practices that you can apply for business continuity in the post-COVID-19 era: 

• Create a Virtual IT Environment
• Self-Healing IT Infrastructure
• Use Disaster Recovery Automation Tools
• Apply Modern Data Recovery & Protection Practices 
• Adopt A Holistic Organizational Approach 

Interesting Read: IT Consulting Experts Share the Must Have Business Continuity Plan Checklist

Creating a Truly Remote Environment

As a business, you understand access to critical enterprise systems or apps like ERP, CRM and more is most important during a crisis. Hence, it's vital that you enable remote access to such critical systems. Take the present example of COVID-19, most of the global workforce is forced to work from home, in such a time business with solid IT resiliency and remote infrastructure are continuing their daily operations much easier compared to once who don’t have a mobility infrastructure in place. 

Under current security policies, most enterprises have limited remote access, permissions, and bandwidth. Even system backups happen over office WiFi. You need to change this scenario in the virtual environment of post-COVID 19. Employees should have remote access to critical systems with robust security measures in place. Video conferencing apps and tools should be used more frequently for office meetings and they must be emulated as an office desk in virtual operations for employees. 

Prefer Self-Healing IT Infrastructure

Wondering what is it exactly? Well, it refers to the IT system or applications that have the capacity to recover from uncertainties with a fast, effective response. How is it possible? By crafting a solid IT disaster recovery strategy that promotes usage of predictive analytics, Infrastructure-as-a-platform (IaaS), load-leveling patterns, and other advanced technologies to build more resilient, fault-tolerant enterprise systems that can survive through crisis smoothly. 

Here is an example: A leading European steel manufacturer is handling 83% of its system incidents and requests autonomously by placing such IT resilient, self-healing systems during the COVID-19 crisis. Its customers also reported faster turnover times and the elimination of manual errors. 

Bring in Information Discovery and Disaster Recovery Automation Tools 

In post-COVID 19 era, it’s important for you to think about tools that promote collaboration, disaster recovery automation, and network security - no matter what type of disaster hits your business. Focusing on information discovery tools like natural language searches is critical to ensure your workforce feels secured and connected. Similarly, when you enable disaster recovery automation, calculating the resiliency of your critical enterprise software or apps and keeping them operational becomes easier.  

Utilize Modern Data Recovery and Protection Practices 

One of the biggest threats businesses faces while working remotely or in a virtual environment is cyber attacks. Ransomware attacks are so critical that they can’t even be detected till weeks post the initial intrusion. As you know technology security loopholes in a traditional IT system can cost millions of dollars to your business. Recovering or restoring your system post such attacks is not easier. Work with expert IT consultants who have good knowledge of enterprise data security and tools. Consider adopting next-gen data security solutions that ensure: 

• Complete automation for mass system recovery at any given time post an IT failure or attack. 
• Instant back-up support for production, development, security, compliance, and analytics 
• Immutable technology (e.g. AI/ML-driven detection) used against ransomware to minimize downtime. 
• Minimum RPO times. 

Think Holistically About the Organization

No matter how solid BCP strategy your IT consulting services experts draft, there is no guarantee of a truly resilient business in unexpected circumstances. Post-COVID 19 era, you and your business continuity experts need to let-go some of the BCP requirements in an attempt to safeguard the other critical players of your company’s ecosystem, including suppliers, customers, and more. Adopting a holistic approach for managing your business where key players work together is vital post any crisis.

Summary 

Now that the global business market is returning to normal post the COVID-19 disruption, embracing a more resilient and robust business continuity strategy is vital for businesses to survive and thrive in the market. What it will need definitely is solid planning, thought leadership, and redesigning of a business model. Bringing agility, flexibility, and resiliency in current operating models is also a must for businesses to get employees, customers, and partners together (or as close to normal) in the virtual environment. If you are also struggling to restore operations post-COVID-19, team up with IT disaster recovery planning and business continuity professionals at A3logics. 

We have years of experience in crafting solid business continuity and disaster recovery planning strategies for businesses across industries.

Drop us a line to know more about our business continuity and IT disaster recovery planning services.