It was probably during the SARs outbreak in 2009 when I first heard about Business Continuity Planning (BCP) with my previous company – an Oil and Gas MNC with revenues of over US$2 billion a year. It was a time where there was panic among companies with a high number of business travelers and the assumption one contagious employee will infect the whole office and bring down the company. While we have proper backups and disaster recovery plans for data centers and insurance for both personnel and property this is not even the tip of the iceberg when it comes to business continuity planning.

The topic of BCP came back again during the 2005 flu pandemic where this time the concern is grave as we had just moved into the Novena office tower and this area was avoided like the plague during the SARs crisis due to its proximity to the Communicable Disease Center. The company is suddenly concerned it will not be able to function should a flu epidemic causes most of the company’s staff to be on sick leave. The measures we took that was to move our in-house data center to and offsite co-location data center. We have an agreement in place where we could rent work space within the data center where some of our staff are able to continue to work should the Regional Office needs to be isolated. We have in place, VPN solutions where part of the staff are able connect from home.

That said, an epidemic is just one of the possible scenarios for a business to stop operating. Business Continuity Planning is all about risk assessment and management. A business needs to have in place a system of prevention and recovery to deal with any event that may cause the daily operation of the system to fail. Business need to understand, in the event of a threat, what staff are essential and the data and systems need to be available for their operations to continue without disruption.

For a small and medium business, the option of a hosted data center with work space access may not be cost effective. Most small and medium business have only 1 or no IT staff at all. What happens when the IT staff goes on leave or becomes not contactable? We at Inspireworkz have the know how to help you prepare for any threats your company may face. Do drop us a note and our friendly and experience consultants will respond to you.