When Business Continuity Events Become Crises

Best Practice Guide

Making the case for an integrated, flexible BCM system that scales with crisis

The Covid-19 crisis has painfully laid bare many of the longstanding challenges to effective business continuity management practices that continuity managers face on a daily basis. The list itself is disturbingly familiar, beginning, of course, with a lack of executive buy-in impeding comprehensive business continuity planning.

Indeed, the data bears this out. Even as the risk of business disruptions increased over the years, surveys continued to point to a stubborn lack of preparation: in IBM research, fewer than 20 percent of business continuity management and IT security specialists could claim that their organizations had a formal business continuity plan. Meanwhile, 73 percent of organizations acknowledged not doing enough to insulate themselves from disaster and ensure business continuity at all times, according to a Disaster Recovery Preparedness Council survey.

Early numbers from the Covid-19 response tell a similar tale. In a wide-ranging survey of the business continuity impacts of the coronavirus pandemic, a mere 37 percent of companies said they had the right technology in place for employees to conduct critical business operations from home in the event of an emergency. And nearly 20 percent of companies admitted that none of their workers could do their work from home due to a lack of technology equipment owned and distributed by the business.

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