INBOX INSIGHTS, September 4, 2024: Business Continuity Planning, Marketing Hiring Demand - Trust Insights Marketing Analytics Consulting

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Three Must Haves for a Business Continuity Plan (BCP)

Let me paint a picture for you: it’s Monday morning, and your CRM just crashed. No customer data, no leads, no marketing campaigns. For most businesses, this would trigger sheer panic—and it’s exactly what happens to companies without a solid business continuity plan (BCP).

These days, business leaders face growing pressure to keep things running smoothly. While disruptions like cyberattacks, system outages, or natural disasters might seem rare, they’re more common than you think. You already have enough on your plate. But here’s the truth: without a BCP, your business is a ticking time bomb.

When I worked in a regulated industry, we not only had BCPs but we also updated them at least quarterly. Our business was built on our data and data collection. If those systems failed, we’d have a lot of angry customers, including the FDA. You don’t want to be on their bad side.

First things first, what is a Business Continuity Plan? In short, it’s a document that outlines all your critical systems that need to continue operating during a critical event such as an outage. Before you get into the weeds of redundancy planning, you need to audit your systems. Not every system you use is going to make the cut.

How do you evaluate which systems are critical?

Start with your customers. Put yourself in their shoes. What services do they rely on? Work backwards and list the systems you use to provide those services. For instance, as nice as it is to have our email newsletter data, it doesn’t currently play a role in our services. If the system goes down, it’s not going to make the cut of platforms we need to restore immediately. Focusing on your customers’ needs (and not your own) will give you your shortlist of systems that need to be in your BCP.

As stated above, you have a full plate. Writing a BCP is not high on your to-do list. It falls into the same category of process development. You know it’s important but not important enough to actually do. If you don’t have time to draft a full BCP, here are the three must-haves for your business continuity plan.

Data Backup Strategy – You need to ensure business data is backed up. Review your shortlist of systems. Is there a clear process for how to access the data both online and offline? Are there automatic backups? Focus on your shortlist of critical systems. This will make completing this task more reasonable.
Roles & Responsibilities – Make sure every team member knows their specific role in case of an emergency. Who has access to your critical data? What is the plan if that person (or team) is unavailable? How do you make sure all the roles are clear? I know that process documentation is a pain, but this is one process you have to have documented. Clear processes help avoid confusion about roles.
Communication Protocols – Who communicates with whom, how, and when? I would argue that this step is equally as important as your data backup strategy. If your team doesn’t know what to do and when, your BCP is just a document and not an effective tool.

I’ll be honest. The first draft of this post was very long-winded, very technical, and very detailed. You can do a deep dive with your business continuity planning. You can dig into each component of each system you use. You can spend weeks, even months, creating a bulletproof BCP. But in reality, you just need things to work. If you review those three steps, you’ll be in better shape than most. Start with your shortlist of critical systems that your customers rely on. Then document those three pieces, and you’ll be ready if disaster strikes.

Do you have a business continuity plan? Reach out and tell me, or come join the conversation in our free Slack Group, Analytics for Marketers.

– Katie Robbert, CEO

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In this week’s Data Diaries, now that it’s back to school, let’s take a look at the jobs market. How are things looking out there for marketers?

What we see over the last 12 months, across six nations, is a continued erosion in demand for marketers, as measured by Indeed.com open job postings for marketers relative to pre-pandemic levels.

In the last month, demand in France and Australia has dropped dramatically. Demand in the USA has ticked up a little in the last couple of weeks, but still remains at 75% of pre-pandemic levels and far below the peaks of 2021-2022.

When we look at the big picture over the past 4 years, we see things more clearly:

After a scramble to hire in 2021 and 2022, the market cooled off, and has been in a slow decline since then. Rather than return to baseline, the market has drifted below baseline for more than a year now in several markets.

What do we take away from this information?

First, because demand remains low, competition for open positions remains high. If you’re a job seeker, this means playing the volume game – applying for as many positions as possible. It also means leveraging your network as much as you can; Indeed.com is one of the better sources for hiring data because it costs far less for employers to post positions there, but it still doesn’t represent the universe of jobs.

Second, looking at the big picture chart, it’s clear that this isn’t going to change any time soon. Barring any major economic shocks, hiring is likely to remain low in the marketing space certainly through the end of 2024 and likely well into 2025. The world is an uncertain place right now, and that uncertainty may be contributing to companies not wanting to hire more assertively.

Here’s a roundup of who’s hiring, based on positions shared in the Analytics for Marketers Slack group and other communities.

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