Let’s go into how a business needs to prepare to sustain themselves—while keeping their clientele up to speed—with a business continuity plan.

Why is a Business Continuity Plan So Crucial?

With digital technology now taking such a prominent role in daily operations, businesses now must deal with more than just potential weather issues and accidents. Now, there are technology interruptions to contend with, sourced from cyberattacks, user errors, and simple bad luck.

Planning Ahead

If you are to protect your business from the ramifications of these events, it is important that you create and implement a strategy that prepares you to do so.

The idea behind a business continuity plan is to enable your business to dynamically adjust its operations so that they can be sustained to the highest degree possible amidst some form of disaster. While a weather event, power outage, or a pandemic likely will create some hurdles, a good business continuity plan can help you find your footing again.

That’s why we always endorse preparing such a strategy proactively. While your planning is unlikely to completely prepare you for larger events, you will be much more able to react appropriately with a framework to base your response upon.

However, the planning process is an involved one. Patriot Tech Services Inc. is here to assist you as you prepare for such events, as we’ll guide you through each step involved.

Staying Engaged

Of course, your operations are only half the battle. You also want the people who frequent your business to know what is going on throughout this time, so you need to make sure that you are keeping them updated.

To do so, make sure that you are making use of all your communication solutions, and make sure your audience is getting the information that they need to continue their relationship with you. Adjusted schedules, the best means of contacting you, and any offers that you might be providing are all good things to share—especially on any of your company’s social media accounts.

Don’t be afraid to use your technology to branch out into other messages as well, especially focusing on the ways that your clients can use what you’ve provided to help them out the most.

This has already proven to be a difficult time for all kinds of businesses, but if you use technology to its full capability you have a better chance of sustaining your business’ health through the entire situation, however long that may be. For more assistance with your technology, or any support you may need as you use it, reach out to Patriot Tech Services Inc. at 877-874-4629.

Video Conferencing is a Different Animal

There is no denying that having a conversation via video conferencing just feels different to those used to in-person conversations. There’s a reason for this.

Comparing face-to-face communications to remote conversations and how long we’ve had to grow accustomed to them, it is no wonder that conferencing seems so strange. After all, we’ve been having the former for about 70,000 years while we’ve only experienced remote voice communications for about a century. The human brain has developed to speak as efficiently in a conversation as possible, not talking over someone but picking up immediately after they are finished.

This is exactly why “awkward silences” are so awkward.

However, because the signal can take a few milliseconds to reach us, these pauses become unavoidable as we are conferencing, which is where the following scenario comes into play:

“…and that’s our progress on that so far…”

“Well, great, spinning off of that, I think—”

“..Now then, moving on to…oh.”

“Oh, sorry, thought you were done. Go ahead.”

“I wasn’t finished, but—no, that’s fine, go ahead.”

it will ultimately assist your team in cooperating with one another and accomplishing more.

For more assistance with your collaboration tools, or any of the other technologies your business relies on, reach out to our team of professionals at Patriot Tech Services Inc.. Help is only a call to 877-874-4629 away.

1. Establish Standards for Clarity and Concision

Here’s the thing: while communication is an essential part of your operations, it has the potential to become a massive time-sink if it isn’t utilized appropriately. We’ve all found ourselves in those meetings that seem to go on and on when the important part could have been covered in five minutes. Any of your collaborative solutions could easily be used in the same way… not the ideal situation when working with a remote team.

Make sure your team is using the tools you have provided intelligently and subscribing to the keep-it-super-simple rule as much as they are able. You may find it useful to create a company shorthand to use to help clarify the context of a message. For instance, if something is purely informative and doesn’t need to be acknowledged, a quick label of NRN (No Response Needed) would help save the recipient some time. Every business operates a little differently, so figure out what works best for you.  

2. Use the Right Tool for the Job

Of course, there are almost as many means to communicate within a business as there are things to be communicated (or so it can sometimes seem). This is for a purpose, as different messages and conversations may be better suited to one format than they are another.

Have you ever tried to announce something to a group over an instant message? Unless you’ve stuck the aforementioned NRN label to it or directed anyone with questions to reach out separately, your message is bound to be lost in the crowd before long. In this case, an email would be the better option for you to use. Just as often, you’ll need to quickly inform another individual of something, and an IM would allow you to do so more effectively than an email would.

This principle extends to any of your business communications, including virtual meetings and other remote-friendly operations.

3. Review What Works and What Doesn’t

So, find a tool to help team members communicate, come up with standards, implement it, and done… right?

Not so fast. Collaborative processes are just that: processes. This means that there is always room for growth and improvement to take place within them, and that you need to actively and continually figure out how to facilitate this development. It’s just another part of the process.

Take the time to review how smoothly your collaborative processes function when they are implemented. Go through each step to see where any inefficiencies presented themselves, whether the process stalled due to unforeseen complications or it wasn’t executed properly. Once these points are identified, figure out what can be done to mitigate the impacts, be it adding another bullet point to the process or providing additional training to the employee involved. After the process has been adjusted, do it again, and stress test until it gets better, or a new solution presents itself as an option.

For help with these solutions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to Patriot Tech Services Inc.. We understand how trying times can test a business and can do a lot more than just offer tips on how to make the most of things. To find out how we can improve your operations with the right technology in place, give us a call at 877-874-4629.