If your business wants to work with the public sector then it must have a strong business continuity plan in place.
Businesses face a long list of risks (e.g. flooding and fires, cyber attacks, IT outages, resignations), and dealing with these risks while carrying out a public sector contract is something your business must be capable of.
If you have never developed a business continuity plan for your business before, we have listed some top tips below.
Do I need to have a business continuity plan?
For some public sector contracts, it is mandatory that your business has a business continuity plan in place.
Since 2005 all UK local authorities have been statutorily required to have business continuity plans for their services and to make sure any contracted service also has them.
This is also the case in many other areas of business and from the insurance industry. Any responsible business should have continuity plans internally and with its supply chain. This ensures that that service is maintained even when a disruption happens.
Planning
First things first. Make sure your continuity plan recognises any potential threats and gives details of how these threats could impact the day-to-day operations of your business.
The Business Continuity Institute (BCI) recommends that your plan:
“provides a way to mitigate these threats, putting in place a framework which allows key functions of the business to continue even if the worst happens.”
Business continuity management should be embedded into your organisation. BCI outlines the following steps on how your business can do this:
Analysis: As highlighted above, your business must identify relevant threats in preparation for business continuity planning.
Design: From this analysis a robust plan can then be built around these threats.
Implementation: Your business can implement the plan in an effort to protect itself from potential threats.
Validation: The plan must be continually validated to ensure its effectiveness. Policies and programmes should be put in place to ensure that your organisation is resilient.
Public sector contracts
The steps above are something any business working with the public sector should consider before bidding for contracts.
To learn more about working with the public sector, visit the Supply2Gov website.