Impact of Covid-19 on Business Enterprise
The covid 19 pandemic has resulted into disruption of many businesses, it has become extremely difficult for the organization to continue their business. Organizations are struggling to take appropriate decision for their business, they are facing a lot of problems to support their workers who are working remotely, supply chain also get hampered. But since the vaccines are administered, business organization can take time to make evaluation of their pre pandemic planning success and take necessary steps to close any gaps. Thus, this essay gives a brief understanding of how business continuity planning can help entity to bring sustainability in their business. It provides a brief discussion of the impact of covid 19 on business enterprise and explain the definition of business continuity planning, how it is important for the organization to meet any critical incident or events that may cause disruption of the business.
Due to the effect of COVID-19 pandemic an unprecedented disruption of systems as well as societies has been caused globally within the environment, that resulted into claiming of almost more than 1.7 million people lives till the month of December 2020.
It portrayed the previously prevalent narrative of rising risks as well as vulnerabilities existing today in the societies and business organisations around the world, which include the threats of technology, political, and environmental. In order to continue their business Corporate Organizations were facing financial as well as operational challenges that are resulting into to downsizing or shutting down of business or workforce. The Data on the global inequity of COVID-19 impact is emerging which are reflecting that low- and middle-income countries are excessively getting affected due to the impact of covid 19. It is revealing that low-income countries are massively getting affected due to the social impact of the covid 19 pandemic in addition with the economic impact (Schmid, Raju & Jensen, 2021).
The last pandemic that had left its threating effect on the business was H1N1 virus or swine flu that occurred more than a decade had passed. Since the occurrence of last pandemic many things has changed in the operation of the business, including the emergence of remote work, improved use of software service and cloud-based applications, manufacturing and lean production strategies used in supply chain are also changed (SearchDisasterRecovery, 2022).
Thus, in order overcome the problem business organization are required to develop a business continuity planning for their business, this would help the organization in preparing and continuing their operation after the occurrence of any incident or crisis. A business continuity planning would help the entity to make identification and prevention or reduction of any risk that may affect the entity, make them ready for any risk which is uncontrollable, assist in recovering from any crisis or incident. With the help of a developed plan and an executed response, damage cause due to the effect of the incident or disaster can be minimized (icas.com, 2022).
A business continuity plan can be defined as a document that defines the processes of prevention and recovery systems so as to deal with the potential threats caused to the business entity (?rkey, & Tüfekci, 2021). It is a more comprehensive plan than a disaster recovery plan and consists of different types of contingencies that may affect the organization’s processes, human resources, assets, as well as partners of the business, this plan take into consideration every aspect of the entity that might get affected due to future contingencies.
Defining Business Continuity Planning
In a business continuity planning three primary aspects are taken into consideration for its key application and processes. This are discussed below:
High availability: Business continuity planning helps in providing capability and processes to the organization so that an organization can have access to its application and processes irrespective of local failures happening within the organization. A business failure may happen in the organization processes, Information technology hardware or software as well as any physical facilities.
Continuous operations: Helps in Safeguarding the organization’s ability to keep things running even at the time of disruption, as well as during the event of any planned outages such as scheduled backups or when any planned maintenance will occur.
Disaster recovery: It helps in providing a way to make recovery from any disasters. It might be possible that due to impact of the disaster data centre of the organization may get destroyed thus it provide a way to make recovery of the data centre which get affected due to such disaster (Ibm.com, 2022).
Thus, it can be said that the main purpose of a business continuity plan is to ensure that organization can able to survive at the time of any contingencies or occurrence of any critical incident. An immediate response to a crisis is permitted through a business continuity plan in order to reduce the recovery time as well as its mitigating impact. If we look at the current situation of pandemic, we can say that this has been presented as a critical incident for the entire world which had never occurred before. We are in uncharted ground, with uncertain reach and length, global repercussions, and no precedence on which to reliably base estimates. During this time when the world is reacting to the impact of COVID-19, it can be said that it is not an ideal time for the management to shift there focus toward developing a complex business continuity plan for the organization. However, with the help of some key business continuity planning points it may help the entity to minimize their recovery time and losses of business (Business.qld.gov.au, 2022). Once the entity is on their way towards the recovery phase of this pandemic, the entity can take steps to review or renew their plan for business continuity planning, the entity can able to boost their plans by learning lessons from the impact of covid 19, which would result into increasing the efficiency in operation as well as allow them to respond more efficiently at the time when any future critical incident occur within the business. While the organization consider the basic business continuity plans it should be kept in mind that in order to be successful organization are required to prioritize their critical business activities, focus on stabilizing cash flows of the entity, make extension in their financial resources so that it become easy for the entity to continue their operation and maintain reputation of their business in the upcoming future.
A business continuity plan of any entity generally functions in different phases these are shown below:
Importance of Business Continuity Planning
The term Prevention is based upon the principles of risk management that involve identifying, analysing, evaluating and treating risks involve within an entity. Preparedness on the other hand focuses towards analysing the effect of the incident over the business entity. It helps the organization which get impacted due to the critical incident by giving priority to key functions including the equipment, personnel, offerings, and activities. The term response defines a plan that provide a detail list of steps necessary to be taken immediately before the occurrence of the incident if possible, during and following an incident so as to contain the effect, providing control and minimizing the impact of the incident. Finally, a road map to minimize the effect of disruption and to make reduction in time taken to achieve recovery can be done with the help of recovery planning of the entity. Although it can be concluded that it is reasonable to say that currently many of the business organization are on the response phase of covid 19 pandemic, the stages involve within this crisis associated with the impact of the pandemic are just started to take a speed. Hence, we can say that there is still time available with the organization to consider all the four phases that include prevention, preparedness, response and recovery (Sac-oac.ca, 2022).
A clear definition of business continuity planning state that it is not an information technology, information risk management process or information security instead it is an executive-led, business organization process. One of the best definitions of this process comes from the Special Publication (SP) 800-39 “Managing Information Security Risk and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST),”, which defines business continuity planning process as an important part in order to achieve a risk-aware processes. It requires informing senior leaders or executives about the types of threat sources and threat events that can jeopardise an organization’s ability to successfully execute its missions or its business functions; and (ii) the potential negative effects or consequences on organisational operations and assets, individuals, other organisations, or the nation if the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of information or information systems used in a mission or business function is compromised.
In simple, it can be said that it ensures the business and business processes to be robust enough to handle any significant threat or event that may cause the entity to says “Closed for Business” (Coalfire.com, 2022).
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of crisis planning and a backup plan. While planning for a specific catastrophe may be impracticable, it is critical to have a strategy in place that allows for alternate work locations, backup of data, logistics, and management of supply chain system.
It is recommended to the organization to take into consideration the business continuity plan to attain sustainability. The plan developed by the organization would not only help them to recover from the impact of covid 19 but also increase their efficiency in increasing their operation in future. In order to ensure continuity in business, existence of any emergency scenario is very important. During current era of covid 19 pandemic situation it has become very important for an organization to react as early as possible in order to reduce the impact and risk involved during the covid 19 pandemic crisis and make their organization ready to face the rapidly changing effect of this critical pandemic (Deloitte Czech Republic, 2022).
Thus, in conclusion we can say that preparing a business continuity plan will help entity to recover more effectively from any incident. It is impossible to predict every kind of incident that may affect the business but it is possible to develop a business continuity plan to cover various types of crises such as natural disasters, covid 19, staff issues etc (Business.qld.gov.au, 2022). In this essay we have critically evaluated the effect of developing a business continuity plan during this critical situation which are affecting the world globally. The impact of covid 19 is severely affecting the business organization as a result of which there is a disruption in business causing shut down or down sizing of the business operation. Thus, by developing an effective business continuity planning, it will make the entity ready to meet any contingency in future and also help in reducing the recovery time of the entity.
References
Business.qld.gov.au. (2022). Business continuity planning for a pandemic | Business Queensland. Retrieved 25 January 2022, from https://www.business.qld.gov.au/running-business/protecting-business/risk-management/pandemic-risk-management/continuity-planning
Business.qld.gov.au. (2022). Business continuity planning | Business Queensland. Business.qld.gov.au. Retrieved 20 January 2022, from https://www.business.qld.gov.au/running-business/protecting-business/risk-management/continuity-planning.
Coalfire.com. (2022). COVID-19 Pandemic Stresses the Importance of Business Continuity. Retrieved 25 January 2022, from https://www.coalfire.com/the-coalfire-blog/march-2020/covid-19-pandemic-stresses-business-continuity
Deloitte Czech Republic. (2022). COVID-19: Managing Risks and Ensuring Business Continuity | Deloitte Czech Republic. Retrieved 25 January 2022, from https://www2.deloitte.com/cz/en/pages/risk/solutions/covid-zajisteni-kontinuity-cinnosti.html
Ibm.com. (2022). What is a business continuity plan (BCP)?. Retrieved 25 January 2022, from https://www.ibm.com/in-en/services/business-continuity/plan
icas.com. (2022). The importance of a robust business continuity plan. Retrieved 25 January 2022, from https://www.icas.com/insight/research/the-importance-of-a-robust-business-continuity-plan
?rkey, T., & Tüfekci, A. (2021). The Importance of Business Continuity and Knowledge Management during the Pandemic Period. In Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute Proceedings (Vol. 74, No. 1, p. 18).
Sac-oac.ca. (2022). Retrieved 25 January 2022, from https://www.sac-oac.ca/sites/default/files/COVID-19_Business_Continuity_Planning.pdf
Schmid, B., Raju, E., & Jensen, P. K. M. (2021). COVID-19 and business continuity-learning from the private sector and humanitarian actors in Kenya. Progress in Disaster Science, 100181.
SearchDisasterRecovery. (2022). Guide to Business Continuity and Pandemic Planning. SearchDisasterRecovery. Retrieved 20 January 2022, from https://searchdisasterrecovery.techtarget.com/The-impact-of-coronavirus-on-business-continuity-planning.
Order an Essay Now & Get These Features For Free:
Turnitin Report
Formatting
Title Page
Citation
Outline
