Operational resilience and business continuity

Resilience is typically defined as the capacity to recover from difficult life events. However then and now we do have to determine the minimum business continuity objective (MBCO). What? In other words what must absolutely run so that we can continue to do business in a meaningful way. Important “recovery” metrics also need to be established such as RPO ¹ and RTO². But here is the thing what if we cannot afford a 4-hour break in our operations? What if you are a retailer that makes more than 50% of its revenue during special holidays such as Valentine’s day? In the context of your business activities 4 hours could be an equivalent to 6 months loss in revenue when compared to another industry sector. As we leverage the speed of transaction and customer focus made possible by digitalization, we can see that a recovery only strategy is not appropriate for today’s business requirements.