IT Consulting
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.
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