… Rudyard Kipling once memorably wrote. It’s also the lynchpin of business continuity says Oval’s Neil Hodgson. Planning, preparation, anticipation and contingency all help you keep your business head should disaster strike.

Business continuity is all about identifying the potential risks and threats to your business – and then mitigating them. In a webenabled world increasingly reliant on eCommerce, technology and networked supply chains, one of the biggest risks is loss or disruption, for any reason, of the IT services we rely on in the workplace. Catastrophic loss of power, fire, weather, cyber attack, terrorism and fraud – even disgruntled employees – all pose an ever-present threat to our ability to trade and our ability to move goods and deploy services or people. You need to deal with the immediate physical impacts and then the aftermath.

How do you respond in the first vital hours? How do you then repair the financial damage done through loss of business, loss of reputation, loss of customers or loss of resources? What about the impact on your contracts if events beyond your control prevent you from fulfilling them?

A common answer in many businesses is “we’ll find a way to get through it.” Fair enough – but in turn, would you be willing to use a supplier or partner who took this attitude to crisis management? All of a sudden, such a hit and hope approach becomes immediately discomforting.

In less dramatic circumstances, what about loss of key personnel through illness or retirement – an issue particularly pertinent to owner-director, family-owned and entrepreneurially – driven firms? Even to huge firms too – Apple is a topical example – where the very literal loss of a key individual can wipe multi-millions off the stock market value. Our solution is the business continuity plan.

Fail to prepare – prepare to fail
Sound strategic planning that identifies the main risks to your organisation sits at the heart of a robust business continuity plan – and that plan is all about responding to risk impact. Does your business manufacture or distribute goods - or do you rely on those who do? If so, you know how much damage your reputation can suffer if you are let down by a faulty product. For instance, would you use a company who has let you down and then didn’t respond quickly to sort out the problems?

Every business is different, carrying different risks of differing levels of priority. At Oval we can help you to develop, test and adapt business continuity plans. We work closely with you to understand your organisation and offer advice and ideas at every stage to improve resilience - as well as developing a practical plan that will help you to manage a major incident.

We’ll also review the capability of your existing business continuity plan, help you avoid the common errors and cut the time it takes to put the plan in place. It’s not just a paper exercise – a key part of the process involves training your staff so that they are able to respond quickly and positively, right when you need them to most.

We put great store by auditing all these risks and building a response plan based on your unique needs. You’ll feel other benefits too: our highly-qualified business continuity specialists are here to help you develop easy, usable processes that will also help you improve your insurance negotiating position, tailor cover effectively to your requirements and ultimately help optimise your insurance costs.