Digital Payments: What they are, How they Work, and their Benefits and Problems
In recent months, all of us have heard extensively about the “war on cash”, the move to make India and other countries “cashless economies” and the general trend among policymakers worldwide to move the economies of the world to a digital and information enabled paradigm. In this context, it is worth noting that the emphasis […]
Why We Should Not Let the Present Global Crisis Go Waste and Make Positive Changes
Never Let a Serious Crisis Go Waste The Chinese term for crisis is a combination of danger and opportunity, which means that a crisis is a good time for opportunity as well. In other words, whenever we are confronted by a crisis whether it is personal or collective, we have the chance to make serious […]
Imports and Customs Clearance – Overview
When any Organization Imports any item into the country, the cargo would need to be Custom Cleared. The consignment transported by Air, Ship or by Trailer on the Road, would have to be deposited at the Customs Notified and Bonded Area. Customs Clearance or brokering is done by third party service providers who are licensed […]
Aligning all Processes – Importance and Challenges
Now, since we know about the different types of processes that an organization has, it is essential that we understand that these are just the pieces of the puzzle. How these pieces fit together is what creates a masterpiece or an average organization. However, understanding the components has given us a clear idea of what […]
Designing and Developing Decision Support Systems
The business intelligence tools or decision support systems aid decision making in an organization. An effective DSS provides you with unbiased data analysis, real time monitoring and rich reporting, supporting you make an informed decision in the least possible time span. A meticulously designed DSS makes use of analytical models, various statistical and econometric tools […]
In the highly competitive world of business and marketing, Organizations are pushed to be ahead of the race and walk the talk. Customer and Market expectations are higher where in the Companies are expected to walk the talk and demonstrate their capability to live through the promises. In such situation, Organizations have had to think on terms of business contingency, Disaster Recovery and Business continuity plans for they cannot afford any disruption of supplies to markets and failing the customer on account of any risk or threat to their business on account of natural calamities, political situations, terrorism or any such perceived risks.
In fact in high value products especially those involving critical functions at the Customers end as well as those involving high end technology, customers expect the suppliers to demonstrate their capability and an operational plan of business disaster recovery in place so that their business does not suffer on account of disruption of services or failure at the Supplier’s end. Suppliers are often required to commit to having the disaster recovery plan in place as a part of the Supplier Contract.
Risk assessment, Disaster Recovery and Business contingency planning involves the entire Organization at all levels. First and foremost it is important to understand the kind of risk that the Business Contingency plan aims to cover. The plan aims to primarily cover the risk of disruption to Business Process, Risk of Life to employees, Management Control & Asset recovery.
Businesses face threats from several quarters. Some of the threats can be due to geographical location or natural disasters and havoc caused by the weather and other natural calamities. In such cases, man has very little or no control over the situation. Even amongst the Natural disasters and threats, there are two kinds of risks namely predictable and unpredictable. Unpredictable risks like floods, hurricane, fire and other such events can totally disrupt the business without giving anyone a chance to prepare for the same.
When we talk of manmade disasters, we are referring chiefly to acts of sabotage, terrorism, industrial espionage and attack, vandalism etc. Some of the companies prefer to include the supply failures due to supply chain network failure or supplier failure as a risk to the business and prepare contingency plan for the same.
Some of the companies which are highly dependent upon limited suppliers for their raw materials and in cases where raw material supplies are scarce and not freely available, the business contingency plan can cover these specifics as perceived risks too.
Similarly in technology and service sector companies, any disruption or threat to availability of skilled manpower required for the business process can also be covered under the risk making the business process unstable.
Events like wars, international sanctions, unstable political situations and strikes etc can also cause potential threat of disruption of business operations and supplies to the markets. The extent of the perceived threat and risk depends upon the particular country and the business.
Companies depending upon high end technologies, software and hardware run the risk of failures of the technology and systems thereby affecting the entire business process. The failure can be of the hardware or of the software. In certain other businesses, the critical machinery used in the manufacturing process can be under risk, thereby causing a threat to the supplies.
An analysis can go into minute level and identify a huge list of risks in the business. However the management needs to take a judicious call to filter out from the list of risks those that need to be covered essentially for, it becomes impossible to build a recovery plan around all of the risks that can be identified.
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