Business Continuity: The Automation Survival Guide Part 1

[john.mackey]

Today, as a follow-up to our “Art of Maintenance” blog series, we’re diving into a crucial topic that often gets overlooked until it’s too late: business continuity.

Business continuity is closely tied to maintenance, since there’s no continuity without maintenance 😊. In fact, a lack of maintenance is bound to lead you onto the path of disruption.

In this blog series, we’re exploring the basics of business continuity, how business continuity is essential to running a successful automation program and all the things you need to consider to run an operation that stands the test of the unpredicted predictable.

Ready? Set? Go!

Business Continuity 101

Let’s start with the basics. Think of business continuity as your “break the glass in case of emergency” plan 🔥

In practice, it involves creating a set of documents, plans and actions that are ready to put in motion in case something goes wrong.

The goal is to ensure that your organization can quickly recover from disruptive events and continue critical operations with minimal downtime – and that the automation program you’ve heavily invested in to run your business processes both:

• Doesn’t cause business disruption
• Is built to withstand other business disruption

In summary, a business continuity plan (BCP) should typically seek to serve the following objectives:

• Minimize downtime: Ensure that your business can continue operating, even if not at full capacity.
• Maintain critical processes: Keep mission-critical processes running to serve your customers (whether they be commercial customers or internal customers).
• Quick recovery: Enable your organization to recover from disruptions as swiftly as possible.

The Business Continuity Institute provides a useful framework as a basis for any BPC. It’s based on “4Ps”: People, process, premises and providers.

• People: includes both your internal team and your customers.
• Process: encompasses the technology and infrastructure your staff rely on.
• Premises: considers the impact of losing a physical location, especially relevant in manufacturing.
• Providers: considers third-party suppliers and service providers.

With that framework, you can easily assess the impact of a business continuity event and mitigate that event for all the parties it may impact.

Why Is Business Continuity a Must for Automation Success?

In many industries, having a business continuity plan isn’t just best practice — it’s a regulatory requirement. But even if it’s not mandated in yours, it’s a smart risk management strategy.

The idea is simple: It’s better to have a plan and not need it than to need a plan and not have it. It’s a safety net.

And since automation is part of your business strategy, disruption to automation is synonymous with disruption to the business. Equally, disruption to the business could mean disruption to automation.

Business continuity events come in all shapes and forms. They can range from global crises like the COVID-19 pandemic to localized issues like cyberattacks or data breaches.

By preparing for high-impact, low-likelihood events, you can ensure that your automation processes remain resilient, and your organizational processes remain operational.

With your automation estate, there are at least three scenarios you’ll want to consider in your business continuity plan:

• Single automation failure: An isolated automation is down. How do you ensure the work gets done?
• Platform outage: The entire automation platform is unavailable. What’s your plan to handle this?
• Data center outage: A broader issue where multiple business applications are affected. How do you prioritize recovery?

The Spot of Automation in a Business Continuity Plan

So where do automation (and digital workers) fit into the 4P framework? There may be two schools of thought:

Digital workers as people

The reason you onboarded digital workers is likely that you needed to expand your capabilities and do new things with the same resources. In this sense, you could see digital workers as colleagues or people; they help you achieve more without increasing headcount, acting much like additional team members.

Digital workers as technology

On the flip side, digital workers are fundamentally technology; they are virtual and wired unlike human employees, and this technological aspect is crucial for their role in business continuity. In that sense, they may be considered as technology and consequently, processes.

We frequently depict digital workers in our marketing materials not just as a clever acronym, but as a useful frame of reference for the technology. They bridge the gap between human effort and technological efficiency, ensuring that your organization can continue to operate smoothly, even in the face of disruptions.

As such, digital workers are neither people nor technology. In the context of business continuity, they must be treated as people and technology because they:

Complete work otherwise done by colleagues	Rely on hosted infrastructure components
Consume data and information in similar ways to human colleagues	Rely on technical resources to support their availability
Usually access systems in the same way colleagues do	Require orchestration, not just communication

Business continuity planning might seem daunting, but it’s an essential part of ensuring your automation processes and overall business can withstand unexpected disruptions.

In our next blog, we’ll explore how to build a business continuity plan for your automation operations, considering digital workers as people and technology.