Business continuity planning – what is it and why is it important?
05 September 2022
Why is it important?
When things go wrong, particularly with IT systems, the effect on your business can be catastrophic. At a general level, for example, the inability to process and fulfil orders, respond to customers’ queries or check stock levels can have both serious financial and reputational repercussions.
Looking more specifically at digital dictation systems, think about how heavily reliant you are on such systems to underpin key document production processes. What would be the effect on customer service levels and confidence if remote workers were unable to dictate and send through the notes of important meetings with clients for immediate transcription? What would be the impact on levels of patient care if healthcare professionals found that they could no longer digitally dictate clinical correspondence?
This is where business continuity comes in. Business continuity is fundamental to enabling your business to continue to function and recover quickly from unexpected events that disrupt your IT systems.
The development of a business continuity plan will help in identifying the disruptive events that could potentially affect your IT systems and networks and critical business processes. It will spell out the steps to take should some form of event take place and what individuals’ responsibilities are.
The key to business continuity is to enable you to bounce back from a significant technology-related problem with the minimum disruption and get you back to ‘business as normal’ as quickly as possible. And that philosophy applies equally to organisations of all sizes – from large multi-nationals to single traders.
The business continuity plan
Your business continuity plan should take into account the wide spectrum of threats that could affect your IT systems in general and your dictation software in particular. Examples of such threats include:
- Natural disasters such as fire or extreme weather
- Hackers
- Sabotage
- Computer viruses
- Ransomware
- Internal staff errors
- Hardware/software failures
- Network/broadband problems
The loss or unavailability for more than a few hours of any critical IT system or information can have a major impact on any business, disrupting its operations. The creation of quality documentation in a timely and efficient manner is a key requirement in many industry sectors, so the unavailability of dictation software which plays a vital role in the production cycle for a lengthy period of time would cause significant issues for many organisations. The role of business continuity planning is to minimise this disruption.
Putting the plan together
Start with a simple question - for each of your critical business processes ask the simple question "what would be the implications if my IT system was unavailable?"
Bearing this in mind, consider the overall approach you take to the delivery of IT systems and services required to support your key processes, and how this could be improved in the light of business continuity. For example:
- If your systems are server-based on your own premises, then you should aim to develop a resilient IT infrastructure that incorporates spare capacity in case of any failure.
- Think about cloud computing which increasingly forms part of a business continuity plan for many organisations, since cloud computing service providers back-up and protect your data by holding it on servers remote from your physical premises and your own hardware. However, bear in mind that it is possible for service providers to lose data, suffer denial of service attacks, or go out of business. These possibilities should be factored into your risk assessments.
Having considered the above, develop a plan that establishes a clear process to respond to incidents. Ensure that all staff are aware of the importance of business continuity and are appropriately trained. Staff with specific responsibilities for the recovery of IT systems will need additional training.
Ensure that your plan is up-to-date by reviewing it on a regular basis and checking that there are no significant changes required due to, for example, a key member of staff leaving or a supplier reducing its agreed levels of support.
Benefits of getting it right
A good business continuity plan will deliver the following benefits:
- It will help to ensure that your IT systems, including your dictation systems, are back up and running as quickly as possible following a major issue and will minimise any resultant financial and reputational losses.
- It will protect against losing business-critical data, irrespective of where, or on what device, it is held in the event of disruption.
- It will help to reassure and retain customers.
- It may help you meet regulatory requirements, particularly in the financial services sector.
