Alessio Vinassa on How to Improve Business Continuity

When founders ask me how to improve business continuity, I recommend three investments: real-time visibility, tested alternative operating paths and clear decision rights. This is my view as Alessio Vinassa: resilience depends on seeing disruption early, having a workable alternative and knowing who can activate it.

How to improve business continuity before disruption hits

Build continuity around three operational capabilities, not a document that nobody tests.

I treat resilience as a design principle, not an afterthought. A business needs to function when a supplier misses a delivery, a platform becomes unavailable or a critical employee cannot be reached.

In my own entrepreneurial experience, a business reached seven-figure monthly revenue before an external shock reversed much of its progress and halted operations for several weeks. Revenue had not removed operational vulnerability.

That experience informs the approach behind my work as an entrepreneur and investor. I want to understand not only how a business grows, but what keeps it operating when its assumptions stop holding.

Use these three questions to assess each critical service:

• Visibility: How quickly would we know that delivery is at risk?
• Optionality: What alternative could we actually activate?
• Responsiveness: Who has authority to act, under which conditions?

These capabilities depend on one another. Early warning without alternatives produces anxiety; alternatives without authority remain unused; authority without reliable information can accelerate the wrong response.

What real-time data helps prevent business disruption?

Useful real-time data reveals threats to customer delivery early enough for someone to intervene.

Visibility is not the number of dashboards a company owns. It is the distance between a problem emerging and the right person understanding its consequences.

Start with one critical customer promise, such as delivering an order or maintaining access to a digital service. Map the suppliers, systems and people required to keep that promise, then identify the earliest warning signal for each dependency.

Monitor exceptions, not just averages

A healthy average can conceal a failing dependency. Overall supplier performance may look acceptable while the only supplier of a critical component is repeatedly late.

• Supply: Track delivery delays and stock coverage against replenishment lead times.
• Infrastructure: Track service errors, capacity constraints and the results of recovery tests.
• Operations: Track unresolved exceptions, queue growth and work dependent on one individual.

Every signal needs a threshold, an owner and an expected response. If stock coverage falls below replenishment lead time, for example, the procurement owner should assess alternative supply before a missed delivery becomes inevitable.

“Real time” should match the speed of the risk: seconds may matter for service outages, while daily updates may be sufficient for some supplier exposures. Record when data was last refreshed so an old reading does not create false confidence.

As I explain in my approach to digital transformation that creates value, technology must improve operating capability. A dashboard that changes no action is reporting, not protection.

How do alternative operating paths reduce downtime?

Alternative operating paths reduce downtime when they are independent, accessible and tested before the primary path fails.

Supplier diversification is a good example. Two suppliers do not provide meaningful protection if both depend on the same factory, transport route or scarce upstream component.

I would rather see one qualified alternative with confirmed capacity than five names in a spreadsheet. Qualification means checking specifications, commercial terms, onboarding requirements and how quickly the supplier can begin delivering.

Test whether redundancy is genuinely independent

The same discipline applies to infrastructure redundancy. A backup environment may share the primary system’s credentials, network dependency or failure exposure; a backup copy is also of limited use if nobody has verified that it can be restored.

For each critical dependency, document four things:

1. The failure that would make the primary path unusable.
2. The alternative path and the dependencies it still shares.
3. The time and cost required to activate it.
4. The evidence that it can sustain an acceptable level of service.

Sometimes the right alternative is deliberately limited: manual order processing, a reduced product range or a temporary service restriction. Define acceptable degraded service in advance rather than improvising promises during an outage.

Optionality has a carrying cost, so I do not recommend duplicating everything. Prioritise dependencies whose failure would cause disproportionate customer harm, financial loss or compliance exposure.

This is the practical meaning of designing businesses for variability: preserve choices where losing them would threaten continuity.

How do decision rights and rehearsals improve response?

Clear decision rights and rehearsed scenario playbooks turn warning signals and alternatives into timely action.

A team can detect a problem and know the solution yet still lose hours waiting for permission. Responsiveness requires agreed authority before an incident, including what happens when the usual decision-maker is unavailable.

For each scenario, specify the activation trigger, incident owner, authority limits, escalation route and backup decision-maker. Separate technical recovery from customer communication so neither responsibility disappears between departments.

For example, a hypothetical supplier-failure playbook could allow the procurement lead to move orders to an approved alternative within a defined spending limit. The operations lead would revise delivery commitments, while one named communications owner would coordinate customer updates.

Rehearse the handoffs, not just the technical recovery

A useful exercise tests the whole chain: detection, assessment, authorisation, switching and communication. Include a complication such as an unavailable executive or incomplete information; otherwise, the exercise may test ideal conditions rather than operational readiness.

Measure elapsed time at each stage. If detection takes five minutes but approval takes two hours, another monitoring tool will not solve the main problem.

Here is a practical 30-day starting sequence I recommend:

1. Days 1–7: Map one critical service, its dependencies and early warning signals.
2. Days 8–14: Verify an alternative supplier or recovery path, including activation requirements.
3. Days 15–21: Assign decision rights, spending limits, deputies and communication responsibilities.
4. Days 22–30: Run a scenario exercise, record delays and assign corrective actions.

Treat this as a first cycle, not a completed resilience programme. Repeat exercises after material changes to suppliers, systems or team responsibilities.

In my advisory work with founders and operators, the objective is stronger judgment and operating discipline—not dependence on someone else to solve every problem. Playbooks should support judgment while making accountability explicit.

Key takeaways

Resilience improves when visibility, optionality and responsiveness are funded and tested together.

• Connect timely data to a threshold, an owner and an action.
• Check supplier alternatives and infrastructure backups for shared failure risks.
• Define who can activate alternatives before disruption occurs.
• Rehearse the full response and fix the delays the exercise exposes.

FAQ

These three questions help translate the framework into everyday operating decisions.

What is the difference between business continuity and resilience?

Business continuity focuses on maintaining or restoring critical activities during disruption. Resilience is broader: it includes adapting the operating model and learning from shocks so the business becomes less vulnerable.

How many backup suppliers should a business have?

There is no universal number; the requirement depends on criticality, replacement lead time and shared dependencies. One tested alternative with available capacity can provide more protection than several unqualified suppliers.

How should a small business prioritise resilience spending?

Start with the dependency whose failure would stop your most important customer service. Establish an early warning signal, verify one workable alternative and give a named person authority to activate it.