Small and medium-sized companies or start-ups that embody even a tad bit of a resilience approach in their business strategies have better chances of weathering the storm better than businesses that don’t. They are also better at handling unplanned interruptions before it results in revenue and reputational loss.
The biggest myth about enterprise risk and resilience management is that only large organizations or brands need them. The truth is resilience is for any organization that has been commenced and is currently functioning. Covid-19 is the biggest evidence of it. To remain and thrive in the market, companies whether they like it or not are forced to find new ways of managing their resources while continuing to respond to client needs or incorporate contemporary enterprise resilience management software into their concrete business processes.
How Integrating Business Continuity Management Software Can Help SMEs?
It minimizes downtime
Without robust enterprise resilience management software, it’s almost impossible to determine how long it may take for operations to resume after a crisis has hit. This uncertainty merged with prolonged downtime can result in a significant loss of productivity, especially finances.
Small businesses incur more tendency to be exposed to narrow cash flow margins, costing a fortune. Integrating business continuity management software can help ensure reduced downtime and recovery better.
It helps small firms to take better measures
Small-medium enterprises might get the sense that they are well-prepared for any kind of disruption. Moreover, they assume and entirely rely on the IT department, assuming they know what is to be done.
Regrettably, all business threats aren’t only IT-related. Depending on a single sector can be risky especially when risks affect numerous factors and variables. The entire organization must involve as a whole and this is what having business continuity management software means. It may not be able to completely prevent natural disasters or cyberattacks, but it can abate their bearing on business operations and functions. The feature to regularly test and update the business continuity management plan also helps in keeping teams in the loop and ensures that they understand and follow their assigned actions in case of a crisis.
It helps protect sensitive data
Every business regardless of size and type functions in a digital world as it employs large sets of essential data stored on its servers. However, this also makes companies vulnerable to the risks of malware, data breaches, subsequent data loss, and insider threats.
In case a small-medium-sized company only relies on cloud solutions and lacks backups that it can result in losing information and data.
Research shows that:
- Hard drive failure is happening at the rate of 1.01%, from 0.93% in 2020.
- 93% of small-sized firms deploy the cloud as a medium to store data.
- 37% of small and midsize businesses faced data loss in the cloud.
These stats depict that a business no matter what the size cannot rely on a single solution to ensure a resilient business. Having enterprise resilience management software includes plans that ensure regular data backups in multiple locations. This helps companies avoid losing vital business data and credentials during a network outage or cyber-attack.
It assures quality control
Clients and consumers expect no excuse in terms of quality no matter how big of a crisis it is. It has fed into the minds of stakeholders that an organization must maintain the quality of its products and services if want to maintain and retain customer trust and loyalty.
An infallible business continuity management plan helps enterprises maintain quality by using temporary alternative infrastructure and technology during a crisis.
It helps bridge communication gaps in the organization
Organizations must ensure their clients, business partners, stakeholders, third-party vendors, and everything is under control during an emergency.
When a crisis hits, the management must ease stakeholders’ minds by communicating with them regularly and transparently and assigning active steps to control the situation. Therefore, it is recommended to choose a business continuity planning software to bridge any communication gaps, find single-point of failure (SPOFs), bust stress, and dimmish employee confusion during a disruption.
Looking for an ideal enterprise resilience management software? Here are 8 essential features that are a must for small and medium-sized enterprises.
1. Compliance with Industry Standards: Integrating enterprise resilience management software helps an organization get certified for business continuity standards and other compliance-related formalities. Complying with legal standards is a must for companies, especially for financial institutions. Companies within the ambit of finance segment must define continuity risk and understand the critical products or services that might be disrupted by the risk.
When choosing a business continuity solution, ensure it has prebuilt and configurable tools to conduct in-depth business impact analysis (BIA), Risk Assessment (RA), crisis management tool, and testing to uncover gaps and risks.
2. Organized, accessible information: From step-by-step action plans to test results, all of your business continuity management and plans should be in one secure, centralized location that is always up-to-date and readily accessible.
Look for a secured solution that ensures the information you need will available whenever and wherever you need it.
3. Function-Based Planning: An effective crisis management software will help you rest easy in a havoc-wreaking event. It doesn’t matter whether a flood or fire turns down a branch because having a plan can help in defining the roles, assets, and resources that are needed to operate in the interim, and get the branch back online.
Opt for a business continuity planning solution that empowers a function-based approach to continuity planning rather than scenario-based planning. It’s more effective to have a plan that identifies crucial functions regardless of the situation.
4. Expose Third-Party Risks and Threats That May Impact Business Continuity: It is important to consider third-party relationships that can impact critical functions and processes at your institution. An ideal enterprise risk management software helps you identify third-party functions that can incur implications and opportunities during an event of an emergency. It also defines the status of how resilient your 3rd party vendors are.
5. Emergency Notifications Capabilities: One of the biggest reasons to opt for intelligent business continuity management software is to send out timely and even beforehand emergency alerts and notifications to staff and shareholders. Some solutions offer early warning alert mechanisms where you get notified before the crisis strikes, giving you better control over a sit.
A good business continuity management solution facilitates two-way communication with staff via voice, text, and email during both tabletop exercises and actual emergencies. AutoBCM NextGen is one-of-the pioneering enterprise resilience solutions that identify anomalies in advance and send early notifications to teams.
6. Pandemic planning: Since the COVID-19 pandemic, companies regardless of size must consider pandemic planning as an important subset of enterprise resilience with dedicated guidance. Seek out a risk management software that has inbuilt offerings of strategies to prevent pandemic situations.
7. Dashboards that Drive Deeper Insights: Choose a solution that offers extensive reporting and dashboards to view every action that is happening in the run time. AutoBCM NextGen by Ascent Business Technology offers a high-level summary of all enterprise resilience and business continuity activities to easily detect anomalies and opportunities in real time.
8. Unified Risk Management: When looking for enterprise resilience management software determine if the solution can connect with other risk management solutions and offers third-party integration. Ensure that it must offer a unified and efficient approach to risk management.