In Brief:

  • Your organization’s success hinges on the ability to plan continuity strategies so you can maintain or resume operations when unexpected events arise.
  • You can define your corporate critical processes by completing a business impact analysis, which helps keep your organization functioning.
  • You can prepare to maintain continuity of business when adverse events occur by implementing a detailed business continuity plan.

Share

Article

Nelnet proactively prepares for the unexpected so we can quickly respond and resume business operations from both incident and crisis situations to ensure we’re fulfilling our contractual obligations and meeting our service levels. While we always hope our precautions won’t be put to the test, the recent COVID-19 pandemic required us to put our business continuity plans into action and allowed Nelnet to show our clients how we can continue to serve them without significant disruption.

While our clients can always count on us for high quality, uninterrupted service, it’s prudent for all organizations, regardless of their business relationships, to plan strategies to ensure their business can continue to operate during a crisis.

Your Organization’s Responsibilities

With increased risks facing organizations today — such as a pandemic, data breaches, cyber-attacks, and weather-related occurrences — you have a responsibility to define your corporate critical business processes. These are the core elements of your business that keep you functioning at your desired level. To reach this level of readiness, your business continuity planning should:

  • Protect the safety and health of your associates and subcontractors.
  • Protect the integrity, confidentiality, and availability of your data.
  • Plan for disruptions, and identify recovery of technical environments and resumption of business operations.
  • Mitigate the negative effects of disruptions on your customers and business operations.
  • Identify and mitigate risks to your associates, customers, business operations, and technology.

Key Plan Functions

Through a combination of advanced planning and activities, your organization can manage business operations under adverse conditions by defining your appropriate resiliency strategies, recovery objectives, business continuity plans, risk management considerations, and standards for escalation and communication to ensure transparency and trust within your organization.

These corporate and business segment continuity management plans are designed to work together when responding to both incident and crisis situations.

Description of Escalation and Communication:

  • Emergency Response – Response to Events Specific to the Safety of Associates
  • Business Resumption – Resumption of Business Operations
  • IT Contingency – Recovery of System Supporting Business Operations
  • Disaster Recovery – Recovery of Data Center Operations
  • Security Incident Response – Response to Events That Threaten Information Security
  • Customer Incident Response – Response to Regulatory, Legal, or Customer Service Incidents
  • Construction Incident Response – Response to Property, Environment, or Public Safety Incidents

Get Started Now

Nelnet is committed to proactively preparing responses to disruptive events. Our proven experience and framework gives you the tools you need to start your own plan — it’s never too late to make a difference. Additionally, this framework allows you to proactively work with your vendors to ensure they also have business continuity plans in place to support the critical products and services for which you have contracted to ensure they are available when incidents or crisis situations occur.

Read more about Who We Are or Contact an Expert to learn how partnering with us can help transform your business.

AUTHOR

Nelnet Diversified Services

Marketing and Communications Team

Our team of writers, specialists, marketers, and managers mix knowledge and experience with enthusiasm, and creativity. This blend allows us to create engaging content to help give your business an edge in highly competitive markets.