SayPro CONTINGENCY PLANNING (SO 2, AC 5)

Description

A contingency plan must be in place to deal with unforeseen shortages in marketing resources. For example, it might so happen that the brand ambassador does not pitch for a sponsorship event. What do you do?

The following steps must be taken when conducting contingency planning;

• Identify risks –conduct a Risk Analysis to identify the various risks that might affect your resources and have the potential to significantly disrupt or harm your marketing activities?

The end result of a risk analysis is usually a huge list of potential threats: if you try to produce a contingency plan for each, you may be overwhelmed. This is why you must prioritize.

• Prioritizing risks – One of the greatest challenges of contingency planning is making sure you don’t plan too much. You need a careful balance between over-preparing for something that may never happen, and adequate preparation, so that you can respond quickly and effectively to a crisis situation when it occurs.
• Risk Impact/Probability Charts help you find this balance. With these, you analyze the impact of each risk, and you estimate a likelihood of it occurring. You can then see which risks require the expense and effort of risk mitigation. Business processes that are essential to long-term survival – like maintaining cash flow, staff support, and market share – are typically at the top of the list.
• Note that contingency planning isn’t the only action that emerges as a result of risk analysis – you can manage risk by using existing assets more effectively, or by investing in new resources or services that help you manage it (such as insurance). Also, if a risk is particularly unlikely to materialize, you may decide to do nothing about it, and manage around it if the situation arises.

GUIDELINES WHEN CONDUCTING CONTINGENCY PLANNINGRemember these guidelines when it’s time to prepare your contingency plan:

• Your main goal is to maintain business operations – Look closely at what you need to do to deliver a minimum level of service and functionality.
• Define time periods – What must be done during the first hour of the plan being implemented? The first day? The first week? If you look at the plan in this way, you’re less likely to leave out important details.
• Identify the trigger – What, specifically, will cause you to implement the contingency plan? Decide which actions you’ll take, and when. Determine who is in charge at each stage and what type of reporting process they must follow.
• Keep the plan simple – You don’t know who will read and implement the plan when it’s needed, so use clear, plain language.
• Consider related resource restrictions – Will your organization be able to function the same way if you have to implement Plan B, or will Plan B necessarily reduce capabilities?
• Identify everyone’s needs – Have people throughout the company identify what they must have, at a minimum, to continue operations.
• Define ‘success’ – What will you need to do to return to ‘business as usual’?
• Include contingency plans in standard operating procedures – Make sure you provide initial training on the plan, and keep everyone up-to-date on changes.
• Manage your risks – Look for opportunities to reduce risk, wherever possible. This may help you reduce, or even eliminate, the need for full contingency plans in certain areas.
• Identify operational inefficiencies – Provide a standard to document your planning process, and find opportunities for performance improvement.

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