Business continuity through a COVID-19 lens

Padma Naidoo, General Manager: Advisory, ContinuitySA

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The COVID-19 crisis has certainly put the spotlight on business continuity. While lockdowns and other imposed restrictions forced certain sectors to cease operating, a number of organisations continued to service customers and deliver products, with varying levels of success. For the latter, one may ask - did having a business continuity plan actually assist during this crisis?

“The simple answer is yes," says Padma Naidoo, General Manager: Advisory, ContinuitySA. Although the plans may not have considered a pandemic of this magnitude, organisations with a well-established business continuity capability have largely applauded it for enabling a swifter activation of remote work and other contingencies required to continue operating.

What worked?

Here are some of the business continuity planning aspects that assisted:

• Business priorities – having a business-analysed view of the critical functions that needed to be resumed versus those that could stand for longer. With less than a week between the announcement and activation of lockdown, this helped direct the effective use of available resources and efforts.
• Resource requirements – organisations that completed a business impact analysis had a clear understanding of existing capabilities and additional requirements, such as:
• The number of staff required to meet minimum acceptable levels of service and product delivery.
• Employees equipped to work remotely versus those that would require laptops / 3G cards.
• The IT / network limitations regarding remote work numbers.
• Functions that could not take place remotely and why.

Having this information readily available assisted organisations to mobilise additional resources required quickly, at a time when companies were competing for available stock.

• Response structures – having a clear and tested framework for incident management and decision-making. Even though a pandemic of this scale may not have been catered for, the entrenched principles of incident management were certainly useful.
• Established teams – having established teams at different levels within an organisation, with trained and rehearsed individuals to implement the response.
• Implemented continuity strategies – although identified contingencies may not have work as intended, they did offer some advantages, for example:
• Work area recovery facilities were used to achieve social distancing and split an organisation’s risk.
• Critical staff were already equipped for remote work.
• Identified manual workarounds were utilised while additional staff were being equipped for remote work.
• In some instances, supply chain diversification assisted with supply delays.

Looking to the future

While existing business continuity frameworks did offer benefit, it is evident that they can be improved based on the lessons learnt over the past few months. COVID-19 marks a turning point for business, social and other spheres. The extent to which change occurs remains to be seen, with several predictions being made by analysts and futurists.

So, how should the face of business continuity change to meet emerging needs? Naidoo suggests that a strategic focus needs to be placed on resilience. "As organisations ponder long-term changes to their business and operating models, either for enhancement or as a response to macro environment developments, resilience needs to underpin their thought process, with continuity principles built into all changes. For example – if an organisation is looking to increase remote work, mechanisms should be put in place to ensure that cross-skilling and succession planning takes place to avoid key skill vulnerabilities. With increased cyber security risk, it’s time to re-evaluate the approach to and measures for information security. 

"If an organisation seeks to diversify / localise its supply chain, due consideration should be given to second and third tier suppliers, as well as driving resilience through collaboration. Taking it a step further, why not use the automation of big data analytics to detect, inform and assess continuity threats and responses? The opportunities are endless.

“We live in a volatile time, and the decisions made now will impact the course of organisations in the future. This is the time for business continuity and risk practitioners to step up and ensure the new world that emerges post COVID-19 is a resilient one,” concludes Naidoo.