Sohar & Risk Assessment

It's estimated that less than half of all businesses have a business continuity plan(www.continuitycentral.com/feature0258.htm) in place Recently conducted research reveals that 46% of businesses don't have a business continuity plan. Moreover, the research suggests that 17% of businesses claim to have been affected by a disaster in the past and that just over one in five of these companies took longer than a week to recover. Around 8% claim it took them over six months before they were up and running again.

Raza Ashraf, CEO, Total Alignment (pictured) will deliver a Business Continuity Planning seminar on Sohar Industrial Estate (www.peie.om), 5:30pm, Tuesday 15 November. According to Ashraf: “Business risk has many facets ranging from recovery from the impact of major events – fire, flood, product recall - as well as realizing the commercial benefits of risk through opportunity management. Indeed, a comprehensive business continuity plan is about anticipating the events or circumstances that could hinder the running of your organisation and having plans in place on how to respond to these.”

“Oman’s manufacturers face a number of challenges and risks, and they need to do everything possible to reduce the chances of these happening. They also need to have an effective plan in place to deal with them if they do. Every year, businesses close their doors because of disasters, but some of these could’ve been saved if they had a strong business continuity plan in place,” remarked Hisham Al Zubadi, Director, Marketing, PEIE.

Ibtisam Al Faruji, co-ordinator for PEIE’s Open House program commented: “Even if a manufacturer does have plans in place it’s important they update them so that they’re prepared for potential risks. We’ve just finished the annual holiday period, how many firms had appropriate measures put in place for this period? For instance, that key staff had access to contact details, such as mobile numbers and home contact details, and that authority had been delegated to a responsible member of staff who’s familiar with the company's continuity plans.”

According to Al Zubaidi, “the purpose of the Sohar Open House is to urge firms in the area without business continuity plans to develop them, we’re also encouraging those businesses with plans to review them.”