The impact on business from natural and man-made disruptions

Why it is critical to have a robust Business Continuity Plan in place, and how to do it 

The ongoing pandemic has shown us that businesses are prone to a wide variety of disasters - both natural and man-made, thus having a strong Business Continuity Plan (BCP) becomes critical for companies of every size – small, medium or large to ensure that their business operations are not impacted.

The advisories for social distancing, and work from home makes it even more important not only to have business continuity plans, but also to adapt to rapidly changing circumstances which may or may not have been foreseen. For example, if employees and new hires have been told to ‘’shelter at home’’ and can’t get to the office, how do you even equip them with laptops and give them other support that they can work from home? That situation could have affected us at Coforge – but our infrastructure, networking, human resources and facilities teams had innovative ways to set up and ship computers and laptops (including direct delivery), combined with remote onboarding and virtual teams to make the transition relatively smoothly.

Some common issues business like yours may encounter during situations like this could be: Strain on the financial capacity of a business specially in maintaining human resources and responding to market fluctuations, Inventory and supply chain shortfalls

1. 1. Facility remediation and clean-up costs
   2. Insurance coverage issues.
   3. Communicating with your customers about status of your operations

A BCP is typically meant to help companies continue operating in event of natural or man-made disruptions and should be able to identify the operational and financial impacts resulting from the disruption of business functions and processes. Some key benefits of having a gold standard BCP for companies are:

1. 1. It builds confidence among your customers that you will be able to perform the operational tasks without any delay that could affect customer satisfaction and result in eventual loss of business for them 
   2. Preserves and enhances your brand value as you become their partner of choice 
   3. Mitigate any financial risk you may have to face owing to client commitments  
   4. Gives you a competitive advantage among your peers as you are able to carry on business smoothly even during natural or man-made perils