Business continuity planning

A business continuity plan normally helps to keep the business trading when they would have probably have failed because of an incident. Business continuity refers to the process of sustaining the operation of a critical system. The aim of business continuity is prevention or reducing outage time and optimizing operation. Business continuity planning is necessary for running an organization that does take its clients and business seriously. There are many business disasters that may occur at any time; thus, it is necessary that the organization has measures in place that will help minimize the impact of the incident. In this paper, it will provide a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of business continuity planning in the financial organization.
Advantages and disadvantages of business continuity planning
There are several benefits in planning business continuity. Business continuity planning helps in protecting the organization’s data, software hardware, and also the people that compose the organization if a disaster strikes. With business continuity planning, it helps ensure that all employees are informed and prepared for the actions to take so as to immediately start the recovery process and ensure the continuity of the business (Snedaker, 2013).
There are several advantages of business continuity planning. One major benefit of business continuity planning is that it helps maintain the continuity of operations and the service delivery. When an organization has a business continuity plan in place, it helps ensure that the delivery of protective services to the public continues. Business continuity planning also helps in ensuring that the organization can proactively identify impacts of the operational disruption (Fulmer & Rothstein 2015). An organization also benefits from business continuity planning through ensuring that the business has in place an effective response to the disruptions that tend to minimize the impact on the organization.
There is also the advantage of building customer confidence. With a business continuity plan, it usually helps to build the trust and confidence of clients over the capability of the organization; thus, being more competent even when others fail to deliver. In regards to confidence, business continuity planning is of great significance to the organization in that it helps to build confidence with the business (Snedaker, 2013). When an organization has a business continuity plan, it tends to develop confidence in the ability of senior management to respond to the series of events and incidents in a formal, tested, and planned manner (Fulmer & Rothstein 2015). The BCP also helps to ensure increased confidence in the workforce in that they do understand that their jobs are not at risk and that the organization is doing something so as to protect their livelihood.
Business continuity planning also offers the advantage of providing a competitive advantage. When customers have confidence in the organization that it has a plan on how to respond to issues in the event of a disaster, it means that clients will ultimately prefer the product and service the organization is offering; thus, leading to a possible increase in demand. Business continuity planning in the financial organization is essential as it helps to increase competitive position through preventing harm to the organization image and reputation and also preventing the loss of clients or shareholder’s confidence.  A financial organization that has a well thought out business continuity plan is important as it ensures that the organization can cope with any crisis that might occur in an easy way. Business continuity planning also proves to clients, investors, and insurers that the business is strong to cope with anything that comes it ways (Snedaker, 2013). The facts that the organization is prepared for anything incident that may occur tend to give the organization an edge over its rivals.
The disadvantage of business continuity planning is that it is time-consuming and also a messy activity. With business continuity planning, it is not possible to outsource the work to the consultants since the business managers must manage the process; thus, they should be fully engaged in all the aspects of planning. Business continuity planning is time-consuming as it requires that the organization should edit the plan for changes and also test their applicability (Bartlett et al. 2012). The other disadvantage of business continuity planning is that it is costly to implement the plan. The organization needs to make sure that it allocates sufficient resources to help in planning and also responding to any incidents. The company also has to ensure that it does have some redundant systems in the sidelines that will be available to the organization in case of anything. With these systems, it means that the organization has to consider down payments and retainer fees and items that the organization may never use meaning that it is an extra cost for the organization.
Conclusion
Financial institutions do face the suspicion of some of its operations as a result of manmade and natural disasters. Therefore, they should have a good business continuity plan that will help ensure a quick recovery. Business continuity planning is important for all organization to help prepare the business for any potential disaster.
 
Reference
Bartlett, B Naujoks, U & Wieczorek, M (2012). Business continuity. Springer Shop
Fulmer, K & Rothstein, P (2015). Business continuity planning. Rothstein Publishing
Snedaker, S (2013). Business continuity and disaster recovery planning for IT professionals. Elsevier

Sherry Roberts is the author of this paper. A senior editor at Melda Research in nursing research papers if you need a similar paper you can place your order for article critique writing services.