The Business Continuity Environment
Proactive organizations recognize and acknowledge the fact that the protection of their assets, business operations, and services are major responsibilities that must be guaranteed and protected for their customers, business partners, employees and shareholders. They have endeavoured to establish a Business Continuity Plan to meet statutory, regulatory, and legal requirements.
To this end, policies and procedures have been developed to support the resumption of critical, time-sensitive business processes, operations and functions in the event of their disruption, not only does this help to protect the organization’s reputation and revenue, but also helps to protect the interests of anyone who may have stake in the organization as well.
The Generic Organizational Environment
An organization’s environment extends beyond its boundaries – It comprises components that affect the organization, but which the organization is unable to directly control or affect in any significant way.
An organization is more than the sum of its activities. An Organization’s environment is an interdependent system or network of activities that is connected by relationships. Relationships occur when the ways in which one activity is performed affects the effectiveness of other activities.
Planning in advance for interruptions is as important as planning any other business process. When Business Continuity factors are integrated into central organizational planning, the enterprise can respond to unforeseen events in an orderly and balanced way. If the processes governing control and coordination are pre-emptively established before disaster strikes, the organization’s leaders will be able to re-allocate assets and resources quickly and appropriately in response.