Business Continuity For Dummies

Protecting Against the FORCES of Disruption

Good mnemonics are invaluable because they make remembering things so easy, helping to ensure that you don’t leave out important areas. Take the six FORCES sectors that we introduce in the preceding section: Financial, Operational, Reputation, Customers and suppliers, Environment and Staff. These areas are ones on which a disruption in product delivery can have an adverse effect.

We take a closer look at the sectors in this section and suggest questions you need to ask to identify the aspects that score highest on your business’s version of the impact grid in Table 4-1 (that is, the products and/or services posing the greatest risk to your business).

Financial: Asking, ‘Where’s the money?’

This area is the most obvious and probably the first one that springs to mind when you think of a business disruption. If you aren’t producing key products, your sales revenue is most certainly going to be adversely affected. You still have to pay your fixed payments and overheads and you may well face extra ones in order to pay to fix the problem. In addition, contractual penalties may also arise because you miss deadlines and lose sponsors.

Ask the following key questions:

Do you know your profitability by product? The products that account for the most revenue cause most trouble for you if they’re out of action.

Do you face any financial penalties ...