Business Continuity — Will Your Business Survive?
The Guest Contributor section of the UEA Business Pulse hosts the opinions and thought pieces written by experts in various fields. Brain Azemchap is an experienced business executive and business consultant. He was gracious enough to write this article on business continuity.

Business Continuity Planning (BCP) refers to the maintenance or recovery of business operations — including services to customers — when confronted with adversary or disaster. The objective is to minimise financial loss, continue to serve customers and preserve reputation and competitive standing.
By the time a business venture sees the light of day, an entrepreneur has invested a lot of personal equity: emotions, cash, family time, personal health, etc. As the business grows, so do its stakeholders; government, employees, customers, suppliers, other investors, etc. Should it fail, the entrepreneur will not be the only one affected. This creates responsibility on the part of the owner and management to ensure that the business is up and running for the foreseeable future. Although management does not always have control over what happens to the business, they have the obligation to identify threats/risks that could jeopardise the business’ existence and plan how they will continue providing products and/or services should the unlikely occur.
What is Business Continuity Planning?
In very simple terms, a BCP looks at what to do to make sure the business continues to exist and thrive no matter the nature of disruption or disaster that befalls it, internal or external, natural or manmade, long term or short term. This includes, but is not limited to: fires, floods, earthquakes, explosions, theft, extended power interruption, technological failures, human error, or terrorism. According to Investopedia, “Business continuity planning involves defining potential risks, determining how those risks will affect operations, implementing safeguards and procedures designed to mitigate those risks, testing those procedures to ensure that they work, and periodically reviewing the process to make sure that it is up to date.”

Therefore, it is a company-wide activity and process. A BCP that is not holistic and does not consider every critical business unit may significantly impede the ability of the organisation to serve its customers when disruptions or disasters hit. Nothing should be left to chance and the Plan should include procedures for all phases of recovery. As the business grows overtime, each department may need its own Business Continuity Plan, which will be decided by senior management and the board of directors.
Key to the BCP is its completeness, relevance and communication so that all stakeholders are aware of its existence, content and what is required of them at what time. It is also important businesses understand their unique circumstances and environment to develop a comprehensive plan that speaks to their reality.
Relevance demands that the BCP be a living document revised at an agreed frequency. It is however not an operations document so the frequency of review should not go beyond two times per year. The review should be done whether there is an adverse event or not. Also, all good Business Continuity Plans must undergo stress testing, training and maintenance activities that are necessary to guarantee their viability as the environment changes. Particularly for new businesses, it is important to assess the effectiveness of the BCP as the business develops in terms of new products, functions/departments, equipment, facilities, new markets, etc.
How To Create a Business Continuity Plan
At the root of a good Business Continuity Plan is thorough business impact analysis and risk assessment. The Business Continuity Planning process should follow this order:
1- Risk Assessment
In this phase, it is necessary to think of all the disasters that can occur, the probability (High, Medium, Low) of them occurring and the impact (High, Medium, Low) if they occur. You will then be able to rate the risks and prioritise which ones should be feared most and planned for.
2- Business Impact Analysis
Business Impact Analysis looks at various business functions and processes and evaluates how they may be affected should the risks or disasters happen. It also looks at how this may affect the entire business’ ability to continue operating and serving its customers. By the time the assessment is completed, the business has a sense of its critical functions and processes, those which will need to be restored as quickly as possible to resume services to the customers. This, and the costs of the disrupted areas, provide grounds for prioritising the functions and processes.
3- Recovery Strategies and Plan Development
When the Business Impact Analysis is done, the organisation has a good picture of the work it has to do and can start planning on how to act in case of disaster. It can look at what options it has if the unlikely happens, then choose which can be adapted. For example, in the case of a financial service, you sould do back-ups of all transactions at the end of each day and keep a copy with the Central Bank or in some third party venue that complies with certain specifications. In all the options, never forget insurance; it doesn’t recover the business, but it helps with the costs of implementing the options.

Detailed plans are then developed for each option with clear details and objectives. Order of implementation of each step is crucial because things usually happen faster when disaster strikes with low tolerance for mistakes. Everything has to be documented so people have something to refer to in case of emergency. Responsibilities have to be very clear. Ideally, a written copy of the plan should be kept in a 3rd party location, because — like in the case of fire — an onsite file may be destroyed.
4- Test, Train, Maintain
Steps 1, 2, 3, will be of no use if the plan is not tested and communicated. Train people on how to execute it and simulate situations to see how they would react. This will enable detection of potential pitfalls and enforce the importance of the Business Continuity Plan process and activities. The training and testing should be conducted each year after the plan has been revised and adjusted to the new realities of the organisation.

Why It Is Important
The BCP is considered a key governance element for big organisations and sits high-up on the board of directors’ agenda and oversight. It is important for entrepreneurs to note that as their businesses grow, future investors will be interested in seeing it.
Responsibility for the plan should be clearly assigned. At the start-up level, this may be the responsibility of the founder and/or CEO. As the business grows, the Business Continuity Plan may become a key compliance requirement imposed by the State and relevant official bodies as a part of being a good corporate citizen. This is very particular for organisations with total system effect in case they fall victim to a major disruption such as financial institutions are a good example.
It is important for small businesses or entrepreneurs to avoid becoming overwhelmed by the thought of building the BCP. Use you own discretion when deciding how complex the plan should be based on the stage of the business. Ultimately, create one, no matter how simple, updating it as the business matures. Alternatively, you can develop it as part of your risk analysis and management process and then build a separate BCP in the future as the business grows.
While my wish is that no business is faced with a disaster or unfortunate event, you know how the saying, “if wishes were horses…” So forgive my asking: how prepared would your business be if you were faced with disruptions and/or natural disasters? What plans are in place to manage uncontrollable events? Even if you don’t yet have a plan, do you at least know those potential uncontrollable events and have them documented somewhere? Will your business survive?
References and further reading:
· https://www.investopedia.com/advisor-network/articles/disaster-preparedness-small-business-owners/
· https://www.ready.gov/business/implementation/continuity

Brain has 20 years of varied business management experience -10 in senior management and executive roles in very competitive environments, with accountability for a country or cluster of countries in West, Central and East Africa. He is the Executive Director at Azems Value Add.
*Thank you, Brain for writing this insightful article!
