Why business continuity is very important for every kind of business?

Business continuity is the tactical and strategic capability of a company to plan and respond to business disruptions in order for the operations of the business to continue operation at an acceptable level. This procedure is different from disaster recovery which is the processes and procedures applied in this method are related to the preparation of maintenance of technology infrastructure in the contact with the a disaster. From the definition, it is clear that business continuity has a focus on the execution of the business, but on the other hand, disaster recovery is more focused on the technology part if the matters. What is important is that these plans in particular the business continuity plan is critical to any organization’s long term survival.

Most of big organizations will consider disaster recovery and business continuity as important parts of standard operating procedure policies. Unfortunately, this is not the case for small and medium enterprises. The most terrifying thing is that, actually these business plans are even more crucial for the small and medium enterprises since they are fragile of getting more disasters. Most small businesses have only one income stream and probably one of two key personnel so if anything happens to any of these key people, the business will be significantly affected. There can be many factors why a disaster can happen but that is not important if you have the proper plans in place to cater for it.

The business continuity for a small or medium company is simple and small, it is different from the one which a large company prepares. Yet, the steps, details, and procedures to build and tailor the plan is the same. It is important to have such plans because it is the responsibility of the business owner to get operations back as quickly as possible so that the employees can retain their jobs and paycheck.

In more than ten years, some researchers have found out more about the reasons that make small business do not prepare such plans. One major reason is because of the lack of time. Small businesses are usually run by a small number of staff with the owner typically taking on a large number of roles in the organization. Preparing a business continuity plan is not so significant for them as they still have a lot of daily jobs to do in order to make the business survive. This task is also unlikely to be delegated to the employees because they do not have the knowledge or access to fully craft the plan. Therefore, in the end, it always remains to be a neglected task in the middle of many urgent tasks.

If some business owners have a plan, it is also difficult to preserve the plan and make it recent. Effective business continuity is the one which is constantly reviewed and updated due to some changes that happen year by year in the company. For example, the business may have a change of executives or a redefinition of roles so that has to go into the plan as well.

Most small and medium businesses do not realize the importance of having a business continuity plan. In a disastrous situation, the plan will reduce stress, save more time and money, and help to cover the trouble quickly. Among the benefits that such a plan will give to small businesses are:
1)Reduction in stress level: When you know that everything will be taken care of in the event of a disaster with a solid contingency plan, you can then spend your time implementing it when the disaster happens.
2) Faster and more accurate insurance claim – The inventory of assets as a part of contingency plan description will be able to help the owner gets faster insurance claims procedure.
3) Short down time - With a plan in place, the down time caused by the disaster will likely to be short.

This short period will be useful to keep your customers and to make sure that the business is all right and not strongly affected by the troubles.