(BLOOMINGTON) – No way to work! Make sure you have a business continuity plan to help your office get back on track after an emergency.
Business continuity planning is a proactive approach to operations at Indiana University so that if an emergency occurs, such as a cyber attack or tornado damage, employees already have a roadmap for getting their most important services back on track.
IU offers tools and support for employees to create business continuity plans for their organizations. “IU Ready” can be accessed for each campus by searching one.iu.edu. The planning process also is being “streamlined” to make it even easier.
A new process is being piloted at IU Bloomington that requires planners to identify just three critical functions.
Organizations also are being encouraged to minimize plans by having one “umbrella” business continuity plan for the organization and possibly one for individual divisions — but not plans for individual departments, as well.
With the new approach, which is expected to be rolled out to all campuses, a plan can be completed in around two hours. It definitely is two hours well spent. Here are some of the benefits of business continuity planning:
- Identifies critical services that an organization provides to meet the mission of the university.
- Assists in outlining critical services provided to your organization by other university units.
- Outlines what technology your organization is dependent upon.
- Helps set recovery priorities.
- Outlines critical instructional and research needs.
What are the possible risks of not having a business continuity plan when disaster strikes?
- Confusion on what to do.
- Inability to set action item priorities.
- Lost time to address recovery needs.
- Negative impact to reputation.
- Possible loss of university revenue.
- Frustration by all involved and impacted.
Indiana Gov. Eric J. Holcomb declared this week Business Continuity Awareness Week in the state of Indiana.
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