What matters most to your business? Perhaps it’s something you never thought of in terms of this exact question. So how do we answer this question?
Well let’s look at it with regards to Business Impact Analysis (BIA). Don’t worry, put simply, this is where we look at the potential effects of an interruption to business operations because of a critical incident occuring.
- Identifying your key products and services
Applying a BIA it allows you to;
- Allows you to DEMONSTRATE reasons behind your decisions
- Show you how to RANK key products in order of IMPORTANCE
- Highlight any ASSUMPTIONS
- Check assumptions on KEY products and services
A handy acronym for this is F.O.R.C.E…
Financial
Operational
Reputational
Customers and Suppliers
Environment and Staff
How to protect against Disruption
Financial: “Where is the money?”
- Do you face any financial penalties if you fail to deliver?
- How would your cash flow cope with a disruption?
- Know your profitability by product.
Operational: Anticipating Production Problems
Reorganise established systems to make sure you can deliver in emergency circumstances.
- Which product/service, if not delivered, would cause the most disruption to your processes or business?
- Would you suffer a knock-on effect to other parts of the business?
Reputation: Maintain YOUR BRAND name
- Which products or services would, if lost, result in people saying negative things about the business?
- Which products or services would, if lost, cause reputational damage?
- What’s the profile of your products; is it likely to be of media interest?
- Which customers will complain the loudest?
Customers and Suppliers: The ‘Other Guys’ in your supply chain
- Are any of them so small that if you fail to deliver they may fail?
- Which Customers and Suppliers are most important to your business?
- Are any so big, that they just stop buying or indeed supplying?
Environment: Staying Competitive
- If you can’t supply, is future business lost or diminished?
- Are you in a highly competitive market, so any outage would have a high impact?
- Which products and services are unique to your business; flagship products?
Staff: Keep them employed!
- Who are your key staff and what backups are available if they aren’t available?
- Which products or services, if lost, would mean that some or all of your staff aren’t gainfully employed?
- Which products and services, if lost, would result in uncertainty in the business and cause staff to begin to leave for more secure employment?
We all appreciate some good business theory! … Don’t we?
…Anyway all this theory is great stuff, but sometimes it hard to visualise for your own business, so let’s put it into context;
If I were a baker……
If you ran a bakery and one day, for example, say there was a power failure and you were unable to bake anything. You sell a wholesale shipment and also run a shop where customers can buy your products.
We now consider F.O.R.C.E
Financial: The weekly wholesale shipment is most important as it generates most revenue.
Operational: Operations unable to function and couldn’t produce any cakes.
Reputation: The brand of cakes, built up over years, is important. The sales of cakes in the shop are important for the company’s reputation as it was this that won the coffee shop contract.
Customers and Suppliers: If the cakes are lost, the company can’t continue for long with remaining products. The other consideration is that the supplier of the biscuit mix is a very small family run firm that relies in the bakery for a significant part of its revenue, so the shops needs to continue operations to protect the supply chain.
Environment: If the coffee shop contract were lost then the market position the bakery enjoys would irretrievably be damaged.
Staffing: Staff’s time is best used in the production of cakes for the coffee shop.
I hope this visualisation helps you relate a BIA to your business. By visualising in this way, you can soon highlight the key areas and what matters most in your business.
Best of luck and happy planning!
The Renaissance Team
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