Contingency Planning in Action

Contingency Planning in Action

Introduction

A contingency plan is referred to as a course of action designed to help an organization or business respond positively to the significant future situation or a situation that may or may not occur. Contingency planning comes mainly with a robust plan B just in case the first one fails due to the increased uncertainty, which could be caused by natural or physical calamities. By this, I mean that every organization needs to be well prepared to face any long-term risks that may arise. Contingency planning is more of the actions taken when managing risk. It is essential for any sector or organization to have a leadership team for contingency planning that will allow the company to be well prepared to counter the uncertainties. These events may include the loss of data, personnel, customers, suppliers, and incidents such as earthquakes, fires, etc. The organization is placed in a position where it will react positively in the future. The damages suffered as a result of earthquakes, fire, or even bankruptcy during the occurrence of such incidents can be easily reversed, and the daily activities can be returned to normal operations within the shortest amount of time. The contingency plan is a part of the disaster recovery process, which deals with risk management and guarantees business continuity.

For this essay paper, we are going to discuss the Medisel Computer Services Company. We will begin by providing an overview of the Medisel Computer Services Company and demonstrating why a contingency plan is needed for this firm. Then we will draw up a contingency plan for Medisel Computer Services Company. Lastly, we will describe the policies and procedures required for different planning efforts. Ultimately, create a method to use, implement, and sustain a contingency plan.

Overview

Medisel Computer Services Organization is a company registered under one person, and the company was started close to 10 years ago. It is based at Dorchester in Boston with its operations in the other three countries. This means that the functional operation of activities within the business is synchronized. This company specializes in providing computer services like selling laptops and other related computer gadgets, repairing, storing, and blending. The company deals in these gadgets as it due to the available reasons that are widely known, such as the high rate of advancing technology. The demand for technology means the right devices and tools are needed to run the situation, which means it is in a rare case for everyone to ignore on purchasing the best-suited gadgets. The Medisel Computer Services Company is managed by a board of directors who appoint the managing director based on voting basing on the credentials that the contestants have. The company has nearly 250 employees delegated diverse tasks across different branches.

The company’s technological strategies across its stand in different parts of the world are diverse and flexible. This company must be plausible for such technologies to have been deployed. Although these systems are very costly, there are many benefits realized after these technologies are deployed. Among the advantages realized are data continuity, which means that the company does not significantly lose data or decrease the company’s operations, but a generous decrease in the event of a catastrophic incident. These are in terms of both the sales volume and the endpoints. The company’s servers are evenly distributed across all three branches and are linked to the main distribution center. Therefore, the management staff manages the practical processes and business activities of this organization effectively. This is a very unique feature of the company, which is technically well updated. This means that whatever action takes place at a certain stand is mirrored in the other stands.

Medisel Computer Services Company has also deployed other well known technological features; for instance, the company has implemented the use of the Entire Resource Planning system (ERPs). This is software that is commonly used in most advanced business management. It is a category of software for corporate management for companies that use I for collecting, storing, handling, and analyzing data from various business operations for their integrated applications. There are various key activities and common activities, which are the manufacturing, production, and sometimes distribution of services. The selected company uses this system for instances in the management of employee activities which are carried out In managing every employee’s activities, Medisel Computer Services Company has taken advantage of the ERP system to monitor what employees do while at their workstations. The recording is considered crucial, as it provides bases for future references. This helps to identify and track all malicious acts occurring in any branch of the firm. As a consequence, the system has made it possible for the management team of Medisel Computer Services Company to detect any action that may cause certain problems in our daily activities.

For every organization, there several factors that hinder the operations of the business. Similarly, Medisel Company has been facing several problems that hinder it from fully providing service efficiently to its customers from the very beginning when it was established. Some of these problems are;

• Prohibitive costs. Medisel Company had several issues in balancing on its costs. As it is known, business continuity planning is exponentially costly as the requirements for availability increase. Many solutions require considerably investing in additional hardware, software and data center infrastructure installation and maintenance(Hiles, 2007). These requirements increase business continuity costs, and many business owners hesitate to invest in protective measures.
• Increased competition. Competition has long been a challenge for us as a corporation. Therefore, due to the many upcoming businesses that produce similar goods, it is a thing that we have to cope with and even go to the extent of lowering their prices well below the market price to attract the attention of the most prospective customers we are looking for.
• High complexity. Our company found it complex to implement, manage, and execute business continuity planning. The prospect of entering into BCP projects can be daunting, and the full experience can prove time-consuming from managing the reconstruction infrastructure to updating disaster recovery documentation and testing the BCP to identify and close potential loopholes. Combining the company’s normal daily tasks with the pressure, it seems almost impossible to focus your attention on BCP.
• Higher turnover rates. In the last few years, our company has lost most of its employees. The complaint was that they are not well motivated and that low amounts of money are paid in comparison to the work they do. The company loses certain skilled workers, which means that new experienced employees will provide other companies with a competitive advantage.
• Reduction in material supply. The business loses its suppliers gradually. Most of the suppliers seek customers directly to obtain an additional profit. That means they focus on the new areas and forget about their old customers. As a result, our firm is forced to pay more cash to these vendors.
• Data loss. Data can sometimes be unavoidable regardless of how well a company is organized into its technological systems. This is because the majority of systems are not robust. They are incidents like unforeseen infectious attacks that can result in loss of data.
• Access by unauthorized persons to confidential information. This serves as a threat to Medisel Company; it is because many attackers are able to access the information of the company unlawfully and to share it with other companies and, in particular, competitors. This could lead to data losses that would be a blow to a company facing such a scenario.
• Some other inevitable events, such as earthquakes, fires, and floods that could occur in a commercial environment, are physical and natural catastrophic. In the occurrence of such events, from Medisel Company cannot satisfactorily confirm and claim that it can escape these events because they are unavoidable.
• The violation of corporate and company law by the employers and members of the subordinate employees are also challenges and threats to Medisel Company that are absolutely essential.

Medisel Computer Services Company contingency plan action

Business Impact Analysis (BIA)

Business impact analysis (BIA) is a systematic process in which the possible effects of an interruption to critical business operations in the event of a disaster, accident, or emergency are determined and evaluated. This systematic process predicts the effect of a business function and process disruption and collects information needed to develop recovery strategies. BIA is an essential part of the business continuity plan of the organization, the process includes exploration of the components in the development of risk minimization strategies to reveal any vulnerabilities and planning components. The result is a report on business impacts that describes the potential risks specific to the organization examined. In this case, when the Medisel company deploys the BIA, it will facilitate the company with the required and necessary information that they are using while also identifying certain threats the company is likely to face. Due to the consideration of its contributing factor, Medisel Company is to consider BIA as the first phase of any business management contingency team (BCMT). The business analysis impact is the major step in the early planning phase in which the planning management team is equipped with different and comprehensive scenarios and possible effects when damage strikes the business or company. The responsible management, which is the BCMT, determines how to take on the BIA while driven by the phases described below. The identification of the event of a threat, the examination of the business unit, the successful events of the attack, possible damage caused by this attack, and finally, the available secondary plan classification.