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Business continuity, or a business continuity plan (BCP), outlines an organization’s ability to maintain and resume business operations during and after the occurrence of a disaster.
The plan includes everything from risk assessment and management to setting up recovery policies for mission-critical operations. The primary purpose of having a BCP is to preserve the assets and digital property of an organization.
See below to learn all about the global business continuity market:
Business continuity market
The business continuity management market was estimated at $510 million in 2021. It’s forecast to maintain a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.5% from 2021 to 2030, reaching a value of $1.81 billion by the end of it.
It’s also part of the much bigger Business Process Management market, estimated at $10.5 billion, and regionally segmented as follows:
- The U.S. market was estimated to be valued at $2.8 billion in 2020
- The Chinese market is forecast for a CAGR of 12.1%, reaching $4 billion by 2027
- Japan and Canada are forecast to grow at a CAGR of 6.1% and 7.8%
- Within Europe, Germany is projected to maintain one of the highest CAGRs at 7.1%
By industry, the business continuity management market is driven by the following sectors:
- Manufacturing
- Retail
- Energy and utilities
- IT
- Telecommunications
- Banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI)
- Health care
- Government
- Transportation and logistics
Business continuity features
To achieve a well-rounded approach to business continuity, there are multiple types of plans, each responsible for one or more aspects of the business, ensuring its sustainability and continuity after a disaster:
Crisis management plan
A crisis management plan (CMP) outlines the steps various individuals and departments are required to take after a disaster that may affect the company’s bottom line, core operations, or reputation.
Emergency management plan
An emergency management plan (EMP) is typically dedicated toward handling environmental hazards and catastrophes, ensuring the safety of the employees, workspaces, and IT hardware. They vary per organization location and sometimes must follow set local regulations.
Business recovery plan
A business recovery plan (BRP) puts in place the steps required for a business to resume activities as soon as possible after an incident. It includes alternative resources, procedures, resource suppliers, and workplace replacement to use in case one or more of the original are out of commission.
Disaster recovery plan
Disaster recovery (DR) plans are aimed at a company’s IT department, outlining set policies, procedures, and steps needed to restore data lost or corrupted after an incident.
Emergency communication plan
An emergency communication plan (ECP) is needed to report properly and swiftly to a company’s shareholders and customers to explain the situation and clear any misunderstandings that may harm the company’s reputation or bottom line.
The various types of business continuity plans all depend on three primary elements:
Recovery procedure: the plans and resources set in place to handle an adverse event
Recovery personnel: the individuals and teams responsible for putting the plans into action
Data backup: restoring all corrupted and lost data from a reliable backup location as soon as possible is critical
The importance of having a BCP
A recent survey found that of over half the companies that weren’t prepared for the economic effects of the pandemic, 27.2% of them didn’t have a BCP in place, while 24% were in the midst of drafting one. Before the pandemic, the number of prepared companies from a 2019 survey was 21%.
“Having a business continuity plan for your organization is critical for its resilience. Business disruptions can result in revenue loss, higher costs, and reduced profitability,” says Agility Recovery in a post.
“The pandemic has provided an opportunity for businesses that didn’t have a business continuity plan to create one — and an opportunity for companies that did have one to document what worked and what didn’t. It will allow adjustment of the business continuity plan to remain agile.”
Marius Mihalec, a member of the Forbes Technology Council, says, “Every business is a potential cyber attack target, regardless of what companies do to safeguard their data. That’s why it’s crucial to have a business continuity plan to maintain critical business functions during and after a disaster or crisis.
“You need to make sure that your cybersecurity and business continuity strategies complement each other to ensure faster crisis response.”
Benefits of business continuity
Business continuity planning isn’t an option that can be added or removed from a business plan liberally. It’s a critical part of operating a business or organization and ensuring its longevity.
Some notable benefits of business continuity include:
- Reduces costs of crisis response
- Strengthens customer and shareholder trust
- Protects company’s reputation
- Speeds up recovery procedure
- Mitigates damages of an emergency
- Enables compliance with regulatory requirements
- Builds confidence among long- and short-term employees
Business continuity use cases
The following few case studies highlight various business continuity solutions offered being used by organizations in different industries:
Just Eat
Just Eat is a U.K. hybrid online marketplace for food delivery. They provide tens of millions of customers with a variety of food options from over 155,000 restaurants.
Just Eat’s growth levels were in the double digits, but they started facing issues with latency and scale.
Having worked with Google multiple times over the years, Just Eat decided to scale their platform using Google Cloud, along with Google Workspace, which proved vital for their business continuity plans.
“We put a lot of effort into using our data to improve our competitive edge,” says Richard Haigh, CTO, Just Eat.
“The level of personalization that we can achieve using Google Cloud, and the scale at which we can do it, really helps us connect better with our customers and therefore, stand out from our competitors.”
With Google, Just Eat was able to minimize data latency from 24 hours to 1 second, enable continuous staff collaboration and communication using Workspace, and offer a personalized customer experience.
Rural Servicios Informáticos
Rural Servicios Informáticos (RSI) is a financial services company responsible for Caja Rural Group’s processing of financial information from rural savings banks in Spain. RSI has 45 entities operating under their name and more than 3,500 offices.
Handling the financial data of millions of individuals and financial institutions, RSI needed to consolidate their data governance project and safeguard their critical customer and systems information to ensure business continuity.
RSI decided to implement Commvault Complete Backup and Recovery, along with Commvault Hyperscale Software and Commvault IntelliSnap technology for data protection and recovery.
“With Commvault Hyperscale Software, our two data centers can act as a backup for each other without any impact on backup performance or network traffic,” says Marián Moro Garrido, head of storage management department, RSI.
“This has already delivered greater scalability and availability for critical customer information.”
By partnering with Commvault, RSI was able to transfer over 4 TB of backup data per hour, enhance their data governance capabilities, and enable greater scalability and availability for customer data.
Accenture Singapore
Accenture Singapore is a business consultancy that serves over 250 clients in more than 19 industries across southeast Asia.
Accenture Singapore sought new ways to access and manage their operations remotely, especially time-critical operations and the information concerning them.
Reaching out to Popul8 and implementing their 360 Digital Twin solution, Accenture’s team was able to remotely map out their assets and navigate visually through the locations of operations.
Digital Twin also enabled Accenture to reinforce their business continuity policies and workforce safety priorities without sacrificing work efficiency in the industry.
“The COVID-19 situation has forced us to reinvent the way we work, the way we look at operations post the pandemic, as we adapt to the new normalcy of working from anywhere,” says the Innovation Hub team at Accenture Singapore.
“With Popul8 we were able to translate challenges into opportunities for the future.”
Business continuity providers
Some of the leading providers of business continuity in the global market include:
- Adobe
- IBM
- Microsoft
- ASG Technologies
- SAP
- Tibco
- OpenText
- Oracle
- Appian
- Fujitsu
