Business Continuity Plans (“BCPs”) and Disaster Recovery Plans (“DRPs”) face an extraordinary test from COVID-19’s dramatic impact on daily life and the economy…
Business Continuity Plans (“BCPs”) and Disaster Recovery Plans (“DRPs”), which are nearly universal in today’s business environment, face an extraordinary test from COVID-19’s dramatic impact on all aspects of daily life and the economy. Most, if not all, BCPs and DRPs have proven inadequate. Nearly all businesses are discovering numerous gaps that pose varying degrees of risk in plans that are simply not designed to cope with such broad and deep social and economic disruptions. Moreover, these gaps are emerging as businesses themselves face mounting financial pressures.
Understandably, there is a strong temptation for businesses
to focus on mitigating current crises and managing day-to-day affairs. With
resources already strained, it may seem prudent to leave tomorrow’s problems
for tomorrow. But now is in fact the best time to take advantage of lessons
learned from the current crisis in order to optimize your firm’s recovery and
make changes to existing plans that will save time and money when the next
crisis comes.
What should your firm be doing now?
Ensure
implementation of existing plans and monitor compliance effectiveness.—Have
communication plans been effective from the start? Are leaders leading? Are
plan deficiencies being escalated promptly to key decision-makers?
Prioritize
gap remediation by severity of risk.—What changes need to happen today, and who
decides?
Response
teams must track and document event details.—Did teams “pivot from plan” during
the crisis when it was deemed necessary to do so? Were these pivots made with
input from appropriate decision-makers so that changes could be coordinated
across the business? Were pivot results better than Plan?
Initiate
readiness for After Action Analysis (“AAA”) by tasking particular members of
dedicated response team with responsibility for documenting all Plan successes
and failures in sufficient detail to support further review, including the who,
what, where, when, why, and how.
Ensure
that such documentation and any supporting evidence are maintained in secure,
stable environments.
Require
real-time risk assessment of Plan successes and failures so that review and
analysis can be prioritized appropriately.
As
soon as practicable, establish the AAA team to organize event data and
realistically assess the Plan’s effectiveness as informed by their review.
Revise
the Plan to capitalize on successes, enhance effectiveness, and reduce risks.
Charting out how your business will move from its current Plan through gap status to the Plan’s future state should begin now, while the urgency of the moment can help drive the critical changes needed to ensure that your business is optimally prepared to face the next crisis.
If you have questions, please contact us
If you have any questions or if you would like to discuss the matter further, please contact us at 201-896-4100.
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