I recently had a great opportunity to learn about an in-plant and a print service provider that have developed a long-term bond that not only creates a buffer for production demand surges but also provides business operational security in the wake of a natural or artificial disaster or a pandemic.

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BCDR) is a set of processes and techniques used to help an organization recover from a disaster and continue or resume routine business operations in the aftermath of a disaster. It is actually two different functional concepts that can work independently or even better together. 

While many people and most companies have a disaster recovery (DR) plan, it is usually focused around the backup and recovery of important data. This is not a new concept. Historically, companies have made copies of their important papers or data files and stored them off-premise in a safe place in case the originals get damaged or lost. Today, in many fields, this practice is even legally mandated, for instance in the handling of HIPPA and SEC data. Business continuity (BC), on the other hand, is really focused on keeping business operations up and running after a crisis. It is about designing processes and techniques used to help an organization recover from a disaster and resume routine business operations. If done properly, considering the circumstances, this resumption can occur in your plant or off-site in another facility.