Why Workspace 365 is a Cornerstone of Business Continuity
The Covid-19 pandemic was a wake-up call for businesses to have detailed plans for business continuity. With the sudden shift to remote work, it became clear that a disaster can happen to any organisation. In this article, we explore how the cloud, intranet, and digital workspaces are essential technologies that form the backbone of a Business Continuity Plan (BCP) and how businesses need to take a comprehensive approach to secure their continuity. We begin by defining business continuity and BCPs.
What is business continuity?
Business continuity refers to the ability of an organisation to continue operating with minimal disruption in the event of unexpected incidents such as natural disasters, cyberattacks, or pandemics. A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) involves identifying critical functions, assessing risks, and developing emergency response and recovery procedures. The goal of a BCP is to minimise the negative impact of a crisis and reduce the risk of financial loss and reputational damage. BCPs are typically stored on the cloud or intranet, but these technologies are incomplete on their own.
Don’t have your head in the cloud
If an office is damaged by fire or flood your business lives on in the cloud, where you have backed up your documents and data. This allows you to “simply” carry on where you had left off, but at a different location – and this is what happened during Covid.
Cloud migration in and of itself enhances business continuity because virtual servers are generally a safer place to store your apps and data than a legacy on-premises server (which can also be hit by fire and flood).
Additionally, cloud data are backed up in real-time or at least very frequently which means that in the event of a disruptive crisis, the damage can be contained because you always have a recent backup.
Yes, the cloud is indispensable to business continuity. But there are pitfalls:
- Complacency
There is a temptation to confuse the cloud with business continuity. They are not the same, not least because the cloud itself exposes a business to certain risks, such as large-scale data breaches. Another Achilles heel is “shadow IT” where employees download and use apps that have not been mandated by the business. This brings us to our second cloud pitfall.
- Going it alone
The cloud is a rich source of applications that may seem helpful to your employee but leave you wide open to the risks of data non-compliance, data loss, or licensing infractions. In the event of a crisis, when your employees are physically and often psychologically isolated from the workplace, it is more important than ever that they use software approved and monitored by you, and that the workspace they use is familiar and reassuring.
This is one of the ways in which digital workspaces such as Workspace 365 play a vital role in securing business continuity.
Confidence and continuity with Workspace 365
Workspace 365 is an adaptive digital workspace that consolidates apps, data, documents, and processes in a single environment. Integrations with the Microsoft no-code/low-code platform Power Apps give organisations the ability to automate and simplify business processes such as expense claims or holiday requests – workflows that are traditionally handled by the intranet.
Workspace 365 enhances business continuity in a number of ways
It minimises “digital sprawl” by assigning a personalised and tailored digital workspace to each individual user based on his role or responsibilities.
We already saw how allocating specific cloud services to specific roles or employees reduces risks to business continuity because it prevents employees from using unauthorised apps or data sources. It is also one of the ways in which Workspace 365 saves you money because you are deploying what you need, and no more.
Workspace 365 boosts productivity by minimising the everyday waste and chaos of navigating between different apps with different passwords – a fragmentation that leaves your business more exposed to being breached or hacked, both before a critical incident and in its aftermath.
By integrating an existing intranet, Workspace 365 makes it a spontaneous part of everyday workflows while optimising BCP compliance in the unforeseen event of a crisis.
You will overcome such a crisis with confidence, if you can perform your work as you have always done – calmly, efficiently, and collaboratively within your Workspace 365 environment.
Ensure your business continuity plan (BCP) is comprehensive and secure with Workspace 365. The cloud is essential, but it's not enough on its own. Avoid the pitfalls of complacency and shadow IT by using a digital workspace that consolidates apps, data, documents, and processes in a single environment.
Workspace 365 boosts productivity, optimises BCP compliance, and minimises digital sprawl, saving you money while enhancing your confidence in the event of a crisis. Don't leave your business continuity to chance - invest in Workspace 365 today.
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