Dare to dream !

When economy is bad, it’s pretty normal for businesses to try their best in cutting cost. But during the process of cutting cost, some businesses tend to look for short term solutions and thus neglecting the long term prospect. They might start cutting cost on things which are necessary to keep their business running. And one of them, perhaps, has to do with business continuity. In other words, backup plans to ensure their businesses can run 100% without fail during the official operating hours.

Some of the top management people might think that their business will not be so unlucky to suffer any problem during the operation hours….since their business has been running without any problem for the past few years. So why bother to continue with all those expensive equipments which are meant for business continuity? Just scrap them off and allocate the money to somewhere else.

They shouldn’t do that. Here are some of the reasons why:

• Luck is outside your control but having a solid business continuity plan is something you can control. Why bother to remove something within your control, for something outside your control?
• Everyone suffers from bad days once in a while and the last thing you want is to be unlucky when there are tonnes of customers waiting for your business to run efficiently.
• If your competitors have a better business continuity plan than you, customers might actually prefer your competitors than you because they can rest assure that everything will be fine while dealing with those competitors.
• Your customers will not be happy if your business fails while dealing with them. And an unhappy customer is not a good customer.
• Can your business still run efficiently if it failed without any proper business continuity plan?

From the points above, it is quite obvious that having no backup plan or no solid business continuity plan will not bring anything but disasters. Your clients will leave when your business fails. They don’t have so much time to fool around with you.

Just imagine this. If you go to Tesco, and there are a lot of people waiting to pay at the counters…and suddenly, all the system went down. DEAD. They started using the traditional method, and old machines to calculate the amount and need to call the banks for EVERY credit card transaction. No backup plan, nothing. Well, they do have a backup plan, but it’s not even half as efficient as it is supposed to be. What will be your reaction? Pissed? Frustrated? I bet you will if they left you waiting for more than 10 minutes even though it’s your turn to pay.

The same thing could have happened to any business, including yours. Remember that it’s a very competitive world out there. Any business which can make the customers happy (and not frustrated), will be able to retain those customers…and maybe even gain more new customers.

So if your business is planning to cut cost…..please don’t cut on such critical things. It’s just too risky to rely on LUCK.