Digital transformation, specifically the technical advancements and changes that result from such efforts, impacts the practice of business continuity planning in the long run.
Hallmarks of standard business continuity planning and management are golden standards viable to every business, it should be clear that enterprises further along on their digital transformation journey deal with the current crisis better than those who don’t adopt to the critical changes that technology brings along with it.
Driving Business Resilience with Business Continuity
Business models are quickly evolving, which opens up vast opportunities to operate more efficiently, develop new services or business models, and serve new customers. However, it also presents fresh risks that connect every aspect of the business, impacting, supplier relationships to delivery of products and services, to customer relationships. Innovators are remaking familiar business models, with the help of technology maneuverers that emphasize convenience, speed, instant gratification and cost reduction in addition to grabbing market share from rivals.
The digital revolution also raises risks.
Here are a few-
- Not keeping up with the pace of Technology
An enterprise without technology adoption is hiding from customers and missing a chance to increase sales. A survey of SMEs in the European Union shows that without the aid of technology finding customers is their top problem. Another survey, by McKinsey, shows that SMEs technologies grew twice as fast, had double the export revenue as a percentage of total sales and created twice as many jobs as companies that used the Internet sparingly.
- Timing to Market
Another risk is getting the timing of the technology wrong. It is a saying that hit the rod when it is hot, the same applies to technology adoption as well. Companies that act too quickly risk not only jumping on the wrong tech bandwagon, but also just not devoting enough thought to harnessing the technology. Timing to market is crucial for it to make it work for the business or integrating it in a useful way.
- Alighting Cyber Security
Possibly the biggest risk! In a world where knowledge is the strongest currency and where everything is networked and online, cyber security is a must to safeguard business continuity and its vital interests.
Digital transformation is rooted in changing business models and building business resiliency around technologies defines the capabilities of the modern enterprise.
The primary directive of business continuity planning emphasises to keep the business running to meet needs of stakeholders, both internal and external. For a majority of businesses, that means keeping the cash registers ringing. Traditional disaster recovery measures therefore sought to ensure mission-critical systems are always online for transactional processing and related business functions.
In a crux, enterprises that have shifted their business models to embrace digital both in products and delivery have a definitive advantage over their peers who have been reliant on historical and traditional models.
The threat exposure for digital businesses is significantly lower than those exposed to conventional brick and mortar varieties. In the times to come, businesses serving digitally based or augmented products would witness a definitive increase in sales and usage while those that do not are scrambling to find ways to weather the storm.
