Business Continuity vs Business Resilience, What Is The Difference?
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With the huge similarities between both terms its quite easy to assume they mean the same. A lot of people use them interchangeably as well and this confuses most people even more. There is really a difference between both terms and you are about to find out.
When the pandemic started no one knew it would stretch this long or cause so many havoc has it did. It affected everything including small and big businesses. A lot of businesses were forced to shut down for good while some thrived irrespective of everything. The business that thrived irrespective is what is termed business resilience. The ability of a business to return to its previous state irrespective of any disruption that ought to have shut it down. Now this can only be achieved if there had been plans and preparations in place, one of which includes business continuity plans.
Business continuity plans assesses disruption possibilities and provides plans and procedures to ensure business operations run or continue no matter the disruptions. These disruptions can come in any form though, a natural disaster, an economic meltdown, cyber attacks, supply chain disruptions, new legislations or even loosing your most skilled employees. Business continuity means expecting disruptions like this to happen and preparing to make sure your business continues its operations no matter what. This simply implies that your business cannot be resilient unless there are continuity plans in place.
It is like building your immune system by taking vitamins, pro biotics , vegetables and all it needs to be strong. You don't know what disease or infection could come your way but you are feeding your immune system to be strong enough to tackle whatever might come your way. Although it may not be business continuity plans alone that keeps your business going due to the difference in business and problems it might face. Other plans might include; risk management, testing and exercising, incident response and management, technology disaster recovery, emergency communication (tech target). This all together form a business resilience plan.
Your business resilience plan or continuity management can only be successful if you have good management or board in place because their support is very critical to your business resilience and so they must be really active. Also, regular simulations of these possible disruptions can help your business prepare better and adapt to working under pressure. It is also important that your business continuity plans are understood by every member of your business so everyone's hands are truly on deck.
Now that you have understood the difference as well as the requirements its important that you ask yourself what plans your business has in place should anything happen, how have you verified and tested this plans will actually work and how you intend to keep your customers or clients satisfied admits these disruptions.