Staff Corner

Moving to a Resilient Future
Through a Robust BCP

Posted on December 15, 2020

There are a number of ways in which your business can be disrupted. Fire, cyberattack, a natural disaster, and most recently, coronavirus (COVID-19). In varying degrees, their implications for business continuity only lead to one thing: business disruption, which often strikes unexpectedly, leaving little time for planning. This is why it is crucial to have a Business Continuity Plan (BCP) ready to implement at a moment’s notice. Although some may not have considered a pandemic of this magnitude, organizations with a well-established BCP have largely applauded it for enabling a swifter activation of remote work and other required contingencies.

As a tech-company, Infobuilder consistently updates its BCP to execute the necessary measures to respond to disruptions both internally and externally. In response to the pandemic, we have established crisis management teams, communicated with both employees and clients, and implemented plans for virtual work to ensure our services to our clients are not disrupted. We had spent years talking about the advantages of digitization, and during these times of uncertainty, it did not fail us. Like a lot of businesses, we could not have anticipated how massive COVID-19 will affect our operations, but with a comprehensive BCP framework in place, we were able to adjust and adapt to the crisis.

Interestingly, one of us found that having a plan in case of a sudden disruption can also be applied in our personal lives. Our System Administrator, Rousell Yuayan-Presbitero Valdez, or as we call her, “Rax” was tasked to lead our BCP implementation, while she herself was embracing major shifts in both her personal and professional life. More than a shift to a work from home set up, Rax also got reassigned from one major client to another project. In the middle of the pandemic, she got evicted from her apartment and had to find an alternative home so she could continue with her work. 

When asked about how she was able to overcome these challenges, Rax states, “You do what you can to be okay. You can’t tell yourself that the pandemic needs to end before you can be okay. You really need to do something right now.” According to Rax, she had to adjust her mindset to survive, just like Infobuilder, she also needs to be RESILIENT. She realized one of the most critical lessons from COVID-19  is the importance of effective continuity planning. There is no substitute for thorough planning and risk analysis, a BCP can come in handy for our business and even personal lives.

Under unprecedented measures, we now live in a volatile time. The decisions we make today will impact the course of organizations and our careers in the future. This is the time for business continuity and risk practitioners to step up and ensure that the new world which emerges post-COVID-19 is a resilient one. To respond to ongoing uncertainty and change, we need to embrace a core set of capabilities and behaviors to embed agility and resilience. Both in our professional and personal lives, we need to go beyond our usual routines and think about a broader set of future scenarios; we need to plan not just for business as usual, but for any major disruptions that might affect us, and we need to be able to act with agility in order to quickly counter existential threats and take advantage of new opportunities.

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