August 2021 - Bay of Plenty Business News

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10 BAY OF PLENTY BUSINESS NEWS August 2021 What is a Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity plan and why your business needs one? TECH TALK > BY MARIETTE TOLMAY Mariette Tolmay is the marketing lead at Stratus Blue. She can be contacted at mariette@stratusblue.co.nz. What is disaster recovery and business continuity? In today’s ever-evolving business landscape, there’s zero tolerance for downtime, a simple human error, a cyberattack or natural disaster could bring your business to a standstill. Having a comprehensive business continuity and disaster recovery (BC/DR) response plan is key to business resilience and for the survival of your organisation. Without getting too hung up on definitions, let’s say that disaster recovery is getting the IT infrastructure back up and running, while business continuity is a broader discipline that gets the business back up and functioning once the lights are back on. Disaster recovery and business continuity (DR/BC) are like any other type of insurance: People generally understand its importance but tend to not pay attention until it is too late. It’s just an unpleasant topic. BC/DR enables organisations to adapt to and bounce back from disruptions while maintaining continuous business operations. Why every business needs a robust BC/DR plan in place: With organisations going through digital transformations and more employees working remotely, cybersecurity is a top priority for almost all IT teams. Businesses must be prepared for cyberattacks and unexpected IT outages such as network outages and server failures. In fact, in the 2019 State of IT Operations Survey Report, nearly 61 percent of the survey respondents who had a security breach in the past year, had two to four IT outages. In the past, some companies were under the impression that only large enterprise organisations needed BC/DR plans. However, it is just as critical for small and midsize businesses. The 2019 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report showed that “43 percent of [security] breaches involved small business victims.” When it comes to running a business, no phrase rings truer than “time is money.” So, the moral of the story: downtime is a big deal. Without a robust BC/DR plan in place a business is at risk of serious financial loss and reputational damage. Incidents are not only potentially toxic to customer trust and loyalty. They’re also the financial grim reaper. The average cost of downtime is $5,600 per minute for medium enterprises, according to a 2014 study by Gartner. The research firm is quick to point out, however, that this is just an average. For small businesses, that number drops to the lower-but-still-significant tune of $137 to $427 per minute. And although we often focus on the loss of revenue and productivity due to downtime, according to independent data protection and security research firm, Ponemon, the largest share of downtime cost is business disruption, a category that includes reputational damage and customer churn. It’s clear that minimising downtime should be a priority for companies of any size and across all industries. Having a proper BC/DR plan in place means in the event of a disruption, a business can quickly recover mission-critical data, restore IT systems, and smoothly resume operations. Giving an organisation the ability to maintain essential processes before, during, and after a disaster. Therefor minimising both the downtime and the cost of a disruption and ensures that a business can operate as close to normal as possible after an unexpected interruption, with minimal loss of data and reputational damage. If your organisation doesn’t have a BC/DR plan in place, start by assessing your business processes, determining which areas are vulnerable, and the potential losses if those processes go down for a day, a few days, or a week. Next, develop a plan. This involves 6 general steps: 1. Identify the scope of the plan. 2. Identify key business areas. 3. Identify critical functions. 4. Identify dependencies between various business areas and functions. 5. Determine acceptable downtime for each critical function. 6. Create a plan to maintain operations. And finally, TEST that plan. NEWSBRIEF Bike tech brake sensor and app to seek investment Potential investors have plenty of options to choose from at the Rotorua Pitch Night on 28 July. Six businesses are lined up to pitch, from a range of industries, including bike tech, tourism, gin and vodka distilling, ag tech and peer lending platforms. Matt Miller is pitching his company BrakeAce. He has developed the worlds first brake sensor and app to help mountain bikers improve their speed. “Currently there are more than twenty companies that offer data products such as Strava and Garmin, but no company offers a tool to help riders improve the way they ride. BrakeAce changes that.” “I really struggled as a mountain bike racer and wanted to understand what made some riders faster and others slower. “I studied the science all the way through my Phd, where I really focused on braking and how this impacts overall trail speed.” “BrakeAce has been five years in development and has been trialled extensively by riders at all levels.” “The sensor measures the data and the app does the number crunching to provide riders with the top three things to improve their speed.” “Users have averaged a five second improvement in just one day from using BrakeAce.” “The global mountain bike market is projected to be worth US$10 billion by 2026 and is worth $13.5 million per annum in Rotorua alone. I’m pitching to raise funds to take BrakeAce to this market and help mountain bikers get faster without the need to get fitter.” The Rotorua Pitch Night event has the aim to introduce investment ready businesses to prospective investors and be the start of an active local investor community in Rotorua. The event is being run by Firestation, Rotorua X and Rotorua Economic Development Limited. Businesses had to apply to pitch. Event Director Darren McGarvie said interest in pitching was high and they only accepted half of those that applied. “We were blown away with the level of interest in pitching, and the calibre of the businesses. We had more than 10 applications and had to make some tough decisions on who should pitch on the night.” “Pitch Night will be an interesting evening with a wide range of industries covered, with a mix of some asking for equity investment, some for lending or a combination of both.” Other pitches on the night include Wire Adventures, a new tourism adventure offering, Copperhead Road Matt Miller Vodka Distillery, CipTech an ag-tech for better dairy plant, vat cleaning and milk quality, Indigishare a peerto-peer lending platform and Pink and White Geothermal Gin. An expert panel will provide feedback to the pitches on the night and ask questions. The panel includes Destination Rotorua CEO Andrew Wilson, commercial lawyer Mark Copeland, Stoked NZ founder Debs Brocklesby, Rhythm &Vines founder Andrew Witters and Rotorua deputy mayor Dave Donaldson. Audience attendance is limited to genuine individual and corporate investors, pitch team supporters and event partner sponsors and members. People interested in attending must register to attend to receive event details. Audience registrations will be accepted until venue capacity is reached. To register to attend go to www. thefirestation.nz/pitch-night/
August 2021 BAY OF PLENTY BUSINESS NEWS 11 the LEADERSHIP ISSUE This month we decided to ask a number of Bay of Plenty business leaders to give us their thoughts on business leadership. We put out our feelers to a wide range of business leaders across the region and asked them to respond to three questions: • What does it take to be an exceptional leader in business in 2021? • What tips do you have for other BOP business leaders? • What are the big opportunities you see for new business growth in the region? We felt this leadership focus complemented nicely the BOP Personality Profile piece on Port of Tauranga’s new chief executive Leonard Sampson (see page 6). We were pleased with those who responded, but there are still a lot of other leaders out there we’d like to hear from. PUBLISHER’S NOTE Thank you to those leaders who responded, we appreciate you sharing your thoughts with the wider business community. We also acknowledge the challenge of answering our questions in such a brief form – your answers are illuminating. We will be running another leadership forum in our December issue. In particular, we would like to see a far broader and more diverse range of comment from right across the region; I for one look forward to reading comments from more women leaders, seeing a wider range of cultures represented and making sure the entire region is well represented. So, the challenge we are issuing: please reach out to us so that we can share your experience, insights and stories. Alan Neben, Publisher UNIVERSITY OF WAIKATO – ALISTER JONES Leading with vision As Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor of The University of Waikato, Professor Alister Jones is proud to have led the development of the new campus space in Durham Street, Tauranga. What does it take to be an exceptional business leader? Leading with vision, as well as integrity, compassion and empathy. We also need to move beyond seeing people as resource – staff are a source of ideas and you need to galvanise their continued buy-in and commitment. This is particularly important in the complexity of the current working environment, where the workforce wants increased flexibility and real purpose. The staff are the power house of a successful business. It’s important to empower your people, to connect and stay connected, and to develop a culture where everyone knows and is contributing to the broader business strategy. This means developing a shared understanding of success, having an aspirational but realistic implementation plan that focuses on the how, and clear measures of achievement. A compassionate leader also works with staff as ‘whole’ people – staff feel valued, and believe that their well-being is important. These are all easy things to say – it’s far more difficult to embed this culture through an organisation. What tips do you have for other BOP business leaders? It’s important to stay the course, and to be resilient and flexible, responding and adapting to changes as they emerge. Be open to taking risks, but fail fast and learn continually. Take action when it’s needed rather than delaying, while also making time to reflect and consolidate. Take a data-driven approach to decision making – what seemed to work yesterday may not still be the best solution. What are the big opportunities you see for new business growth? PROFESSOR ALISTER JONES Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor, University of Waikato Alister is currently the Senior Deputy Vice Chancellor of the University of Waikato. A former Dean of Education and Research Professor, Alister has had a long involvement in international education as well as building educational research capability in a number of countries. Businesses are not islands – partnerships are important. However, these partnerships require purpose, collaboration, and integrity. Through high quality, flexible qualification pathways, the University of Waikato is contributing to the Bay’s pool of talent, including growing business leaders. We’re in the business of growing people, and there are fantastic opportunities for businesses to partner with the University across a range of areas, including research and development, internships, and accommodation and student services. The University’s increasing presence and connections across the Bay, nationally and globally, will support a growing knowledge economy across the region. OUT NOW YEAR BOOK C E L E B R A T I N G B A Y B U S I N E S S | 2 0 2 1 Alister, don’t miss out on Yearbook 2022 – we’d love to have the University of Waikato profiled in the 2022 edition https://bopbusinessnews.co.nz/year-book/
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August 2021 - Bay of Plenty Business News

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