Business today faces unprecedented scenarios where things don’t go as planned which leaves businesses susceptible to a variety of emerging challenges.
Managing these risks by using a business continuity strategy is the key to the survival of any business in unforeseen situations. Businesses that have a strong business continuity program can excel with a survival mindset to plan, maintain, and carry out their regular business operations smoothly.
Take the current COVID-19 situation, for example, it was quite challenging for businesses to continue their operations during the crisis.
Companies that had a business continuity plan and remote working set up somehow managed to cope up with the challenging situation. However, the change was not pleasant to many organizations as they didn’t have a virtual communication set up.
Regardless of whether you are ready or not, don’t underestimate the importance of video conferencing in business communication especially when the whole world is forced to adapt to significant changes like office closures and remote work culture.
What exactly is a business continuity program?
A business continuity plan is a backup plan every organization must have to continue its business operations even in times of unforeseen situations that are not in our control.
However, most businesses start looking for a continuity strategy only in times of challenging scenarios like pandemics or natural disasters. But, it is not the right practice.
You must prepare for such challenging situations beforehand, making it important to have a business continuity plan in place. A business continuity plan normally constitutes guidelines to modify your business operations when your key resources are not available.
Benefits of business continuity planning
The benefits of business continuity planning are several. From preparing you to manage the continuity of your business workflow to enjoying resilient benefits, a well-crafted continuity plan will help you survive any type of emergency situation and crisis.
Let’s explore some of the benefits of business continuity planning.
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Builds confidence among your workforce
When you have a business continuity plan in place, it will help to build confidence among your employees. Because they know what they must do when an emergency situation arises.
Another benefit of having a backup plan to continue your business operations is that employees will be more adept at handling both smaller and bigger disruptions as they would be prepared for it.
The more they are familiar with the plan, they can assess the level of challenges associated with the new business activities and can maneuver business operations in a fast and smooth way.
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Ensures compliance with industry standards
If you have implemented a business continuity strategy, you can ensure that your business is compliant with industry standards.
If your business is compliant with industry standards, it offers proof to stakeholders that you are running your organization responsibly adhering to the rules and regulations.
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Preserves your brand value and reputation
Organizations that aren’t prepared to handle challenges appear incompetent to the customers. It will also cause you to stumble and mishandle the communication between vendors, clients, employees, and customers.
Your business continuity plan helps you preserve your brand reputation you have worked hard to achieve.
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Offers valuable business data
An efficient business continuity plan produces a lot of valuable business data like critical business activities, financial impacts, recovery time objectives, etc.
Smart organizations make use of this data for their process improvement and to plan strategic activities that will help you navigate your business forward. Having a top-notch business continuity plan will help your business recover from any crisis in minutes.
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Gives a competitive edge
Even if you have a business continuity plan, your competitors might not have one. In that case, you can use it to your advantage.
In today’s competitive digital world, adapting a business continuity program will differentiate you making you more attractive in the industry. Being able to resume and recover business activities also make you attractive to your customers.
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Mitigate your financial risk
Business continuity programs not only help to mitigate your business risk, but also financial challenges. By having the right business backup plan in times of major crisis, you can reduce the risk of a data breach, system failures, or loss of data. The financial risks associated with emergency events, even if it is small can be avoided with a good business continuity plan.
Tips to improve your business continuity strategy
A proper business continuity plan must include resuming business operations, moving your workforce to remote work, managing the supply chain, or assigning positions if employees handling important roles are unable to attend the office, etc.
Now that you know what is the use of video conferencing, your efficient business continuity program must also integrate a virtual communication strategy to continue the business communication and collaboration even if things go wrong.
For carrying out important business communications and collaborations, video conferencing is important. If you know the benefits of video conferencing are, you would integrate it as a part of your regular business strategy.
So what are the benefits of video conferencing?
Video conferencing helps remote team members to be part of the team, regardless of their physical location. It also helps to save our business budget by eliminating business-related travel as the teams can connect virtually instead.
Now let’s explore the important tips to improve your business continuity program.
Embrace remote work culture
During times of pandemic and emergencies, businesses must adopt remote team capabilities to scale up business activities in a timely manner.
Arrange regular virtual meetings which will help your remote team determine and fill the digital gaps if any.
You can also consider conducting important business meetings and interview processes through online video sessions which makes the entire process smooth and straightforward.
Facilitating remote communication through video chatting
Both audio and video live streaming must be an integral plan of any business continuity programs to stay connected with the global workforce across the world.
Organizations need video conferencing solutions that are simple, scalable, and secure with advanced features and functionalities that support group chat with a large team.
Look for solutions that offer a real-time chat system to the whiteboard so that you can take our business meetings to a whole new level with live and engaging sessions.
Resource management and team collaboration
Video conferencing and live streaming are extremely beneficial to power your virtual meetings within your company. Video conferencing helps your team both internal and external to communicate and engage each other. Resource management and team collaboration tools integrated to live streaming solutions allow organizations to create and manage tasks and easily assign resources.
Adapt to the changing customer needs
To continue your business operations in times of crisis by addressing the constantly fluctuating interests and needs of customers, you will have to adapt your products and services accordingly. Customers of this digital age already prefer the convenience of online shopping.
So, if you are not accustomed to providing your offerings online, you must start adopting it. With enhanced engagement online during crisis times, consider providing products to customers in a way you can automate your already existing business activities.
Conclusion
It is always great to have a business continuity strategy in place in case of a worst-case scenario. When you suffer a data breach, or go through a pandemic or a natural disaster, a power outage, or other serious emergencies that are beyond your control, your business continuity plan to ensure smooth operations and reduce potential losses.
Live streaming solutions and real-time chat systems constitute an efficient business continuity plan. Whether you are new to your business continuity planning process or modifying an already existing business continuity strategy, you must consider integrating video conferencing.
Consider this Coronavirus pandemic to make your business future-ready for any global crisis with a well-crafted business continuity program that equips you to run your businesses efficiently and be an industry leader.
