Business Continuity Planning webinar - New Zealand focus

New Zealand has had more than its share recently of major disruptions, including earthquakes and severe weather, so Business Continuity Planning should be a high priority for both public and private sector organisations. Unexpected events can have a devastating impact on your business, your brand, your customers, and your suppliers. This can impact your ability to operate as normal, interrupt production and cashflow and incur significant extra cost – all these can result in severe setbacks and potentially even the failure of your business.

Standby Consulting is running a 40-minute intensive session through Business South (Otago’s chamber of commerce) on what goes into effective Business Continuity Planning and the types of disruptions most likely to impact Otago and Southland businesses, and has relevance within New Zealand as a whole.

Do you have a plan for your business to deal with the unexpected?

With a Business Continuity Plan, where you know what to do when the unexpected happens, you can minimise the impact and recover more quickly and decisively. Evidence has also shown that communications is critical in these events. If you respond quickly and positively, and communicate well to your stakeholders during a disruptive event, you can actually increase your client base.

Your presenter

This webinar will be led by Sam Mulholland, the Managing Director and Founder of Standby Consulting. Sam has been involved in business continuity planning for more than 30 years. He is a Certified Business Continuity Planner and a Certified IT Professional. Sam has been personally involved with assisting organisations during crisis and disaster events. His company has worked with clients all through New Zealand, Australia and in the Middle East.

Sam has worked both in Southland and Otago. For this webinar he will focus on the types of events that could happen in our regions.

“Business Continuity Planning is not just about dealing with just the big event like an earthquake, it is also about fires, building damage, cyber attacks and even some day-to-day disruptions that we all have experienced in the running of our businesses. We cannot predict what will come, but we can prepare how we respond when the unexpected happens.”

Topics that will be covered

In this webinar Sam will outline what is a Business Continuity Plan and why you should have one, and the benefits of having a Tested Plan.

You will learn:

  • how to Identify your risks and exposures, thinking outside of the box to anticipate the possible events that could happen

  • Identify what is key to your organisation during a disaster, your pressure points, and who will be making decisions during a disaster situation

  • Confirm the elements of your business that you will need to be operational

  • Define who is going to handle communications and who they need to communicate with

There will be a candid discussion on where Otago and Southland businesses are most at risk and the unique features of typical events such as a cyber attack, including how to check that your IT does have proper protection in place and is resilient enough to survive a cyber attack.

The webinar will conclude with how to embed a plan into your organisation and ways of testing your business continuity and disaster recovery plan.