Business Continuity Consulting: Trade Associations

How Trade Associations Can More Effectively Represent Member Companies
Trade associations are focused on representing and advancing the interests of their member organizations through value-adding initiatives. Key activities often include:

Advertising
Lobbying
Bringing together organizations to identify and resolve common, complex issues
Setting industry standards
Coordinating with other related industry trade associations and government entities

However, many trade associations fail to address one key capability, both for themselves and for their member organizations – working to protect their members’ reputation by ensuring essential operations can take place. While many individual organizations plan for business continuity, very few trade associations have taken steps to promote and support the development of effective business continuity strategies for their member organizations – or even to prepare their own organization.

Business continuity is relevant to trade associations in two different ways. First, in order to perform the day-to-day critical activities, trade associations need to develop internal business continuity programs focused on protecting critical assets and minimizing downtime. Additionally, trade associations have the unique opportunity to identify common vulnerabilities and industry-wide issues faced by their members, as well as collaborate to determine the most appropriate mitigation and recovery strategies.

Internal Business Continuity Program
As mentioned previously, trade associations perform a number of key activities, including advertising and lobbying, as well as creating awareness for member organizations. Members expect that their trade association will be able to perform these actions as needed, in any circumstances. While some activities are less-time sensitive, others cannot suffer considerable downtime without significantly affecting the performance and capabilities of large groupings of member organizations.

In order to best serve their members, trade associations should develop effective business continuity programs that identify critical processes, analyze vulnerabilities, determine appropriate risk mitigation, response and recovery strategies, document recovery plans and test and maintain program elements.

By involving the board and other association leaders in the process and getting their input and approval for all critical program elements, trade associations can demonstrate their dedication to fully serving the needs of their member organizations using strategies that protect and recover the association’s critical activities.

Setting Standards for Member Organization Continuity Programs
In today’s 24/7/365, just-in-time marketplace, most organizations, particularly those involved in business-to-business supply chains or members of critical infrastructure, have developed and continue to maintain business continuity solutions. While it’s common for organizations within a particular industry to face similar risks and issues, there is very little effort among trade group associations to share lessons learned, which if done, would strengthen the entire industry’s sustainability. Yes, business continuity can be a differentiator amongst competitors, but sharing business continuity best practices can enhance an entire industry sector, protecting all participants’ reputations.

Trade associations should also consider developing voluntary standards outlining a basic level of business continuity preparedness that member companies should meet in order to maintain essential operations throughout an incident. By setting an industry-wide standard, trade associations not only reduce the duplication of effort but also strengthen the overall industry’s business continuity knowledge and preparedness.

A related value-added activity is collecting and sharing information during major disruptive events. Trade associations are often very “connected” with government and other associations, and therefore have access to information that others may not. Developing processes to collect and share information can enable a more timely and complete response effort by member organizations.

In general, trade organizations “look out for” their member organizations by identifying common issues and working to enhance public perceptions of and awareness in the industry. Taking steps to strengthen the resiliency of all member organizations can only help improve public perception and, particularly for organizations involved in critical infrastructure, ensure services will be available when necessary. By taking steps to both improve internal preparedness and strengthen member organization resiliency, trade organizations can demonstrate a dedication to the protection and betterment of their members.

Avalution has deep experience in assisting trade associations with their business continuity programs. Contact us today to take advantage of a complimentary, 30-minute discussion with one of our experts to further explore business continuity strategies and challenges specific to your organization.