Understanding the Value of Crisis Management Planning

Senior executives appear to have gotten the message. Nearly 80 percent of business leaders polled in an ODM Group survey said they believed their companies were only a year away from a potential crisis. These results are all proof positive that we are living in unstable times, not just in politics, but also for markets and businesses selling their goods on those markets. Companies can no longer afford to wait for crisis to wash up on their doorstep. For one, the financial toll can be devastating. A cost of downtime survey indicated that a majority of businesses thought that a single hour of downtime could cost them anywhere from $51,000 to over $1,000,000. And the average time to restore availability of critical information systems: nine to twelve hours.