BC professionals have six months to win extra funding post Covid-19 lockdown.
The unprecedented disruptive impact of the Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in a unique window of opportunity for business continuity professionals according to new research from the Business Continuity Institute.
The research conducted for the BCI’s latest publication, The Future of Business Continuity & Resilience, found that more than 95% of BC professionals were confident of securing additional financial and resource support post Covid-19 due to the increased profile of business continuity during the crisis.
However, most BC professionals also believe that this is a window of opportunity that will close quickly, as the focus moves elsewhere and that they need to take advantage of the extra resources available within the next six months.
“Now is the time to ask for budget! I have been able to recruit one more team member as a direct result of our actions taken during COVID.“
Respondent to BCI survey
“COVID-19 may have shaken many organizations to their foundations, but it has highlighted the importance of Business Continuity as being at the core of an organization’s resilience strategy. We don’t have long to act though – respondents believe we have just six months to act.”
Rachael Elliott, BCI Head of Thought Leadership
So, what should BC professionals do to take advantage of this unique opportunity to gain more resources? Well, write a business case for the additional funding of course! This will need to consider business drivers, the long-term benefits of the proposed investment, a supplier analysis and finally the ROI that will result from the procurement.
Your windfall, if you manage to obtain it, is likely to be a one-off, so it needs to be something that will bring a long-term benefit, and not just a short term stop-gap measure.
Investing in an incident management platform, such as Crises Control, offers a very cost effective way of procuring ongoing support for the work of the business continuity team, providing a range of functions such as BC plan storage, virtual testing and real-time distribution, as well as the platform’s core critical communications capabilities.
Your investment now would include the initial set-up, onboarding and training costs. And if you chose a multi-year subscription package (most of our customers go for three years) you would be set up for the foreseeable future.
But don’t delay. The advice from the BCI is that this window of opportunity is likely to shut down within six months, as the focus moves away from Covid-19 onto the next issue of concern to the C-suite.
Shalen Sehgal – MD Crises Control
