Business continuity, or, better called, Operational Continuity, is an important part of any company. Above all, the one that must provide services 24 hours a day or simply, in the event of any emergency.

These services are also defined in English as Business Continuity Planning (BCP). According to Investopedia, it is the processes involved “in the creation of a system of prevention and recovery from potential threats for a company”. That is, several services that ensure that no operation of the company is affected.

The risks of companies are factors that affect operational continuity. These can range from natural disasters (fires, floods or weather-related events), up to cyberattacks.

Therefore, once  risks are identified, for Investopedia, the Operational Continuity plan should include:

*Determining how those risks will affect operations.

*Implementing safeguards and procedures to mitigate risks.

*Testing procedures to ensure that processes work properly.

*Review processes and make sure they are up to date.

Operational Continuity plans are an important part of every company. Threats and process interruptions in companies result in lost revenue. This means the company spends more. And if it’s not well planned, even more than budgeted.

Hence, what would be the 4 benefits of having an Operational Continuity service? In Tecnova, we share some of them.

Identify and mitigate risks

For BDC, when there is an emergency, the business may experience an interruption in its operations due to: high staff absenteeism, unavailability of supplies and materials, or, due to disruptions to services such as energy, transportation and communications. All these factors carry risks and should be thought out when creating the Operational Continuity plan.

To ensure continuity, an organization must address proactive threat and risk management impacting its operations.

Save costs and avoid insurance

At RefreshTech, they claim that the company’s downtime costs due to risks “can cost a company on average from $8,000 to $74,000 per hour. A business continuity plan is designed to minimize downtime.” This is explained, for example, by setting a guide for backup schedules and service recovery procedures. Fixed processes and fixed costs.

In addition, as Web y Empresas states, the percentage of investment in an operational continuity plan “will have a direct impact on the company’s human assets.

This way, the purpose should be  “avoiding the costs associated to the resumption of processes, as part of disaster recovery. Process that is costly for any company.” In one way, Operational Continuity should aim to minimize that cost.

Immediate action for operational issues

After determining failures, risks and processes that need to be tackled, it’s time to get into action. For Bcpresources, running a successful Operational Continuity plan “reduces the risk of a data breach or system failure”.

Same argument is supported by RefreshTech. According to this company, when a company has a detailed continuity plan, the impact of problems can be minimized. “This allows the business to resume operations as quickly as possible, allowing the company to offer services and meet deadlines on time,” they say.

In Tecnova, to solve Operational Problems, there are immediate actions such as service reports and platform capacity, support of demands (in routine permanent maintenance tasks), monitoring to detect anomalous events and so on.

Competitive advantage

In any industry, having a robust Operational Continuity program represents an advantage. Today, it is a differentiating factor to respond, retrieve and resume trading operations in the event of an outage. This value adds to the company’s reputation. Because even if there is a minimum difference, it can finally be what convinces potential customers to prefer that company over another.

As Web and Companies states, “all actions that pursue business continuity, seek to minimize barriers to productivity.” Therefore, in the case of Tecnova, it applies strictly aspects such as performance, capacity and availability of infrastructure and services. All so that Operational Continuity services have a high effectiveness in any company.