Business Continuity

Business Continuity Management (BCM) is a management strategy based around a set of principles which will allow a business to continue to function, in the case of a major or minor incident. This incident might otherwise threaten the viability of the business. For example, computer or telecomms failure, fire, exclusion from buildings due to criminal investigations or health and safety issues, etc.

This may sound like Risk Management, however Business Continuity differs from Risk in a very fundamental way. Whereas Risk Management seeks to identify ALL threats AND opportunities which it is possible to identify and control, Business Continuity focuses on being ready to deal with any incident, whether it be caused by a predictable or unpredictable threat. The identification of threats therefore is a very small part of Business Continuity, as the incident can be handled using BCM techniques, even if the threat causing it has not been previously identified.

What might be considered the most important aspect of Business Continuity, is the analysis of your businesses functions. Business Continuity employs a procedure called Business Impact Analysis (BIA) which is tool that enables a complete understanding of your organisation, and a cataloguing of all essential processes of your business.

Once the essential processes have been identified, a business continuity team or practitioner will examine each process, and thereby determine a maximum period of time that the business can survive unscathed without that particular process.

Contingency strategies will then be devised, which will allow each and every process to be restored, within the necessary time (within the 'Maximum tolerable period of disruption' or MTPD).

The essential point about these strategies, is that they enable processes to be restored, regardless of the nature of the incident that caused the disruption.

These strategies will then be summarised in a Business Continuity Plan. This plan should be concise, and easy to use. Relevant parts of it should be memorised by key individuals in the organisation, in order that in the event of an incident the plan can be followed in the event of an incident, without having to read the plan. This leads to a Business Continuity Culture, where all individuals in an organisation, understand the issues and strategies which are relevant.

With a successful Business Continuity Plan and Culture, an incident which is entirely unforeseeable is no more of a threat to the organisation than an incident which can be predicted. This once again shows the differentiation from Risk Management, which can only plan for threats or opportunities that can be identified.

The BCM process is however not finished at this stage, as plans must be tested using Business Continuity Exercises and reviewed on an ongoing basis. This has two main benefits. The first is that weak points in the plan are identified. The second is that the Business Continuity culture is reinforced, which in turn leads to a better general understanding of your organisation.

The 3-day Business Continuity Foundation course helps you prepare your organisation to recover from disasters that could damage your organisation's chances of survival.

The 1-day basics course introduces Business Continuity Management.

The 1-day Business Impact Assessment course provides you with knowledge of how to assess your organisation to understand what disaster may strike with what impact so as to plan against it.