商务风险管理指南如何在不利的形势下继续做生意.pdfVIP

23 Business Continuity: For When Things Go Badly Wrong You wake up to find a major gale blowing. Many roads are impassable, but with difficulty you make it to work. There you find the phone lines are down, so your telephone and internet connections are both out. A large tree has fallen on to the spray booths, so your production is stopped. The production director says it’ll take some weeks, possibly a month, to repair the damage and install new robots. Until they’re back in operation, all production is halted. ‘Got any ideas, Charlie?’ you say. The production director shakes his head . When Things Go Badly Wrong Despite precautions, things can go wrong. A disaster may strike at any time. So the organization needs a contingency plan for each of its main risks. More importantly, it must be able to continue operating. Some risks, like fire and flood, bring an organization to a standstill. Companies can usually forecast the kind of crisis they will suffer, because each industry has its own problems. To take just two examples: • Retailers risk armed robbery, staff theft and shoplifting – including wrongful arrest. • Any large employer which is reducing its staff number may suffer worsening industrial relations. This can lead to an industrial dispute or strike. However, organizations also suffer from ‘Black Swan’ events. These are unforeseen incidents which no one had imagined. The volcanic ash cloud that stopped airplanes flying in Europe came as a complete surprise to everyone. It halted supplies of microchips, flowers and mail. The Biggest Threats The loss of IT is the single biggest perceived threat to UK organizations, according to a survey by the Chartered Management Institute (.uk), as shown in Table 23.1 . Table 23.1 Which disruptions would have a major impact on the organization? Source: CMI Sources of Crisis The survey in the table above reflects what managers perceive as major threats. But the biggest real sources of cr