Why Business Continuity Planning Must Take a Front Row Seat

It’s highly unlikely your New Year’s resolutions included not running out of toilet paper, learning how to cut your own hair or how to sew face masks. 2020 has been wildly successful at turning things upside down in unpredictable ways. But our personal grooming and shopping habits were just one part of our lives suddenly disrupted and transformed–our jobs and how we do business also evolved overnight into a whole new “new normal” in which BCP (business continuity planning) is more important than ever.

Despite the turmoil and uncertainty, life and business must go on. While relying on technology was nothing new for many industries, the shift to remote work, virtual meetings and doing everything at a distance has made it indispensable.

Going fully digital in an instant has been jarring for businesses of all shapes and sizes. Managers and staff are trying to overcome their fears and uncertainty, shift habits and overcome steep learning curves, all while hoping their technology stack is up to the challenge and performs as needed.

For firms that have outsourced some or all of their IT management to MSPs, their dependence on these technology partners is more critical than ever. Downtime equals disaster when everything is online.

MSPs must rise to the occasion and provide levels of service and support they’ve never previously faced, all while acting as a wise and steady trusted provider for customers grappling with these sudden shifts. MSPs that do so will do more than simply keep their clients up and running; they will have the opportunity to deepen and expand their relationships to add more value and increase the size and profitability of those engagements.

Opportunistic MSPs can use this crisis to their benefit without being exploitative. With a focus on optimal customer service and satisfaction, adding services is a natural, organic side effect of the situation we’re currently in. To do so, MSPs should help their customers prepare for the worst.

Business Continuity Planning

Although it might feel a little late in the game for business continuity planning, the initial shift to remote work is only skimming the surface when it comes to preparing businesses for a variety of disruptions. VPNs and laptops are only one aspect of what’s required for firms to survive and thrive when things get crazy.

Minimizing disruption is the name of the game, so businesses and their MSP partners must try to prevent the problems they can stave off while rapidly recovering from those they can’t. That means identifying the risks, understanding the threats they pose, and devising a business continuity plan (BCP) to handle them.

While these plans will ideally never be enacted, when the time comes–and it has for many in recent months–the BCP should be executed and then periodically reviewed. The lessons learned can be applied going forward, and new aspects of the company’s business operations and technology stack can be incorporated.

A typical BCP consists of the following elements:

• Team – BCPs need owners intimately familiar with the plan’s details. There’s no time to train and research when you’re already in a crisis. They’ll know what’s involved and can serve as a resource for the rest of the staff.
• Objectives – When executing a BCP, the ideal is obviously to keep running without a hitch. But since a seamless transition isn’t always possible, prioritized goals should be agreed upon by the executive team, such as data integrity or customer satisfaction.
• Business Impact Analysis – What happens when a system goes down? Who feels the brunt when a business unit disappears? This exercise identifies the weak points and the critical resources that must be restored first to minimize problems.
• Backup and Disaster Recovery – The only thing worse than not having access to data is losing it altogether. A full review of how systems and databases are being backed up must be conducted, as well as the procedures to restore data and services during and after a catastrophic event.
• Testing Plan – BCPs can’t just cover everything “in theory,” they must be tested to ensure businesses can truly bounce back in a crisis. Nothing should be taken for granted, nor should anyone assume it will “just work” when things go sideways.
• Information Checklist – While some emergency scenarios can be game planned, many come to fruition in unpredictable ways. Minimize dependencies and single points of failure by including a comprehensive directory of key staff and systems so anyone can take the reins in a crisis.

Best Practices for Today and Tomorrow

If the current situation has taught us anything, it’s that investing in preparedness upfront will