What is Business Continuity Management?

 

Business Continuity provides a framework to understand the impacts a disruption may cause to the business and affords the opportunity of advanced planning to manage and limit the damage caused by the disruption

In planning it considers:

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• low probability, large impact events (e.g. fire, flood)

• high probability, small impact events (e.g. staff absenteeism, supply chain interruptions).

 

In planning for a disruption to the business it considers the interests of its key stakeholders, reputation, brand and value-creating activities.

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Why have Business Continuity Management?

 

The successful application of business continuity increases an organisation’s resilience to deal with abnormal events which, in turn, contributes to higher corporate performance. It provides reassurance to management, shareholders, stakeholders, that your organisation is in “state of readiness” to deal with any disruption.

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It is better to be prepared and know how you would respond to a disruptive event, rather than trying to plan for and recover after an event has occurred.

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The BCM Lifecycle

 

Policy and Programme Management is at the start of the BCM Lifecycle. It defines the policy relating to BC and how it will be implemented, controlled and validated through a BCM programme.

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Embedding BC continually seeks to integrate BC into day-to-day business activities and organisational culture.

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Analysis reviews and assesses an organisation in terms of what its objectives are, how it functions and the constraints of the environment in which it operates.

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Design identifies and selects appropriate strategies and tactics to determine how continuity and recovery from a disruption will be achieved.

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Implementation executes the agreed strategies and tactics through the process of developing the Business Continuity Plan (BCP).

 

Validation confirms that the BCM Programme meets the objectives set in the policy and that the organisation’s BCP is fit for purpose.

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