ENHANCING RESILIENCE through BUSINESS CONTINUITY PLANNING Together with our partners, our ecosystem is currently experiencing a wide variety of circumstances related to COVID–19. Our Salesforce AppExchange team is actively working to address specific issues and develop programmatic approaches as we continue to evaluate current circumstances with customers and partners alike. Based on our recent Salesforce partner survey, approximately one-third of responding AppExchange partners do not have and/or are not prepared to execute a business continuity plan (BCP). This means we have a great opportunity to share best practices together as we take the necessary steps to plan for the future. In this overview we’ll provide: • What business continuity planning is and how it can be helpful to your organization • An overview of the Salesforce business continuity program • General resources that can help your organization take initial steps to get started BE PROACTIVE, NOT REACTIVE There are many potential disruptive events to businesses worldwide, both natural and human-made. Taking steps now to help protect your organization against future disruptions should be top of mind, and if you haven’t already done so, it’s a good time to start developing your own business continuity plan. Business continuity planning is an imperative investment in your organization to help withstand disruptive events in numerous ways. It is an essential discipline of creating a system of prevention and recovery, to help: • Mitigate reputation and financial damage • Avoid ad-hoc decision-making amid a disruption • Map a clear path forward to expedite recovery and return to normal operations It’s important to note that business continuity plans are not emergency response plans (for example, plans that address response to office hazards and safety), crisis management/incident response plans (for example, plans that guide leaders in decision making in response to a crisis event), or disaster recovery plans (for example, how to recover essential technology systems). While they often work in conjunction with these other aspects of your resilience plan, the primary focus of a business continuity plan is to mitigate disruption to critical business process operations. FORMALIZING A BUSINESS CONTINUITY PLAN Development • Engage BCP stakeholders to secure leadership endorsement and initiate the plan development process. Meet with senior leadership, detail benefits of the BCP, estimated timeline to completion, level of effort, ongoing support requirements and more. • Conduct regular business impact analyses to understand potential disruption impacts to your organization. • Develop your BCP by working with subject matter experts who execute critical business processes in their respective areas on a day to day basis. 10