Business Continuity Planning

What is business continuity planning?

Twenty-five percent of all businesses that close their doors due to a disaster never reopen. Using our approach designed especially for manufacturers, CIRAS can help you put a plan in place to minimize the impact of a disaster on your business—in just one day.

Business continuity planning is the process of ensuring that your critical business functions are prepared to react to and recover from a disruption with a minimum amount of impact to your business. The basic process of business continuity planning is to

• identify risks to your business;
• evaluate the likelihood and impact of disasters on your critical business functions (including manufacturing, material, equipment, suppliers, customers, IT, etc.);
• develop plans to recover those functions if they are impacted by a disaster.

What are the benefits of business continuity planning?

After a disaster or major disruption to your business, you simply do not have the time to figure out how to recover. When you have a good business continuity plan, you have made many of the hard decisions in advance—you will have a set of resources and plans in place, allowing you to focus on the right things at the right time.

In short, a business continuity plan is your business plan when the worst happens—a good one will give you the best chance to stay a viable business in hard times.

What can CIRAS do for my company?

CIRAS has developed an approach to business continuity that is designed especially for manufacturers.

In CIRAS’s eight-hour Business Continuity Workshop, you will

• identify risks to your business;
• document basic information regarding your critical operations;
• assess criticality of functions and develop mitigation plans;
• develop an action plan to continually reduce your risk over time.

What is my next step?