Top Software Tools to Ensure Business Continuity

If COVID-19 has taught the business world anything, it's that business continuity tools are essential to ensuring the operation of everyday processes when the world is turned upside down. Stay-at-home orders paired with an overwhelming number of abroad or overseas employees have meant that the need for constant digital communication, sharing, and incident management ability has drastically increased. Throughout the pandemic, businesses across the globe have turned to their BCM plans in an effort to restore and maintain order, and five specific BCM tools have stood out above the rest and enabled them to press on in this unpredictable era.

Top Business Continuity Tools

These business continuity tools all focus on fulfilling specific needs that, while in existence before the COVID-19 pandemic, certainly weren't as heavily relied upon as they are now. The ability to oversee and manage additional aspects of a business from a completely remote position has given more control to business owners and management teams and helped to promote steady growth for many enterprises during unstable times.

Mass Notification Tool

Perhaps especially important during a pandemic, modern businesses need to be able to broadcast important notifications to their teams at a moment's notice. A mass notification tool such as Everbridge can help businesses send emergency communications to the appropriate recipients quickly and with built-in flexibility. Additionally, the administrator has the ability to manage task lists within the application, see who has seen the message and who hasn’t, and create notifications for various incidents that are available at the click of a button.

SharePoint/Team File Sharing Apps

Data sharing, specifically, has been paramount over the past year. As more business operations are going remote, web-based applications for document sharing, content collaboration, and more are increasingly important for BCM leaders to consider. Microsoft Teams announced new SharePoint and file-sharing capabilities for 2020 that included file check-in and check-out features, document approval improvements, and Outlook tools that enabled teams to better manage their shared data. If your team prefers to use Google tools, Google Workspace features various platforms that allow collaboration and tracking capabilities, such as Google Drive, Google Docs, and Google Sheets.

Group Text/Communication Tools

Staying connected with coworkers, managers, clients, and team members while out of the office has enabled projects to continue forward even while the boardroom table collects dust. Group text features offered by mobile applications such as Signal, Facebook's WhatsApp, BlackBerry's BBM Enterprise, and Microsoft's GroupMe have kept the conversations going remotely and enabled collaboration from various parts of the globe. These tools can also enable organizations to achieve better resiliency during COVID-19 when teams aren't able to meet in-person like they used to. 

That said, relying on only one of these tools could be a downside – to ensure resiliency throughout the pandemic, organizations should implement multiple forms of communication such as Zoom, WebEx, and more.