Business Continuity

The discipline of management planning before, during and after a crisis is generally now known as Business Continuity Management or BCM. This is a systematic methodology to consider what plans can be set up now to activate and ensure organizational resilience in the event of a significant risk impacting the corporation. In short, how fast can the company get back to ‘business as usual’.

Many different terms have been used to describe the process of managing corporate disruption including:

• Business continuity planning;
• Continuity planning;
• Contingency planning;
• Crisis management;
• Disaster recovery planning;
• Emergency management;
• Incident management;
• Disruption management;
• Business resumption planning; and
• Business resilience.

Perhaps originally these terms each had distinct meanings, but with time and technological advances, they have become interchangeable for many organizations. Today, under the BCM umbrella, some of the terminology is beginning to return to its original meanings:

• Business continuity planning now is often used to refer to those BCM activities associated with activities that assist in the continuing availability and capability of property, people, and information; and
• Disaster recovery planning is often used to refer to those BCM activities associated with the continuing availability and restoration of the IT infrastructure (but should not be confused with the wider recovery and restoration activities).

To the frustration of many consultants who built a business around the phraseology, BCM is not the production of a nice lever arch file of documentation with a few ‘what ifs’ and possible responses. It’s also not about showing the file to the CEO getting a tick and then forgetting about it.?

Instead, BCM must be a robust process so that individual employees:

• Better understanding of uncertainty about the future;
• Realize the potential for different types of disruption;
• Better plan for future management of those disruptions,

and put in place business improvement now to reduce the likelihood and/or consequence of significant future disruption.

The simple questions the BCM should address and the flow as shown in the above diagram are as follows:

• What could happen?
• So what does it mean to me?
• What is critical to continuing our business?
• What do we have to do before, during, and after an incident/event/crisis/emergency?

When an overall approach to BCM is taken, there are both tangible and intangible benefits to the organization.

Tangible benefits

Demonstrable BCM systems provide improved protection of shareholder value. Compliance is a huge issue for all corporations today and whilst the demands in Asia can be somewhat tempered, North American and European clients and their jurisdictions will require BCM systems in certain sectors. Insurance companies look favorably on companies with a good BCM, this can be a pricing policy conditions benefit. An effective BCM provides genuine reductions in operational downtime and losses that can result from a disruption event.

Intangible benefits

The key intangible benefit is usually the preservation of reputation, shareholder value, and market base by getting back to business as usual more quickly. Managed exposure to risks of business disruption and improved operational resilience to unforeseen events become part of the corporate core skills.

In addition to obvious reputational benefits there can be more subtle savings; ensuring continuity of supply; Improvements in efficiency and effectiveness of processes; and Reduced costs of operating during disruption. These aspects can bring real competitive advantage, along with improved staff and other stakeholders' confidence that the company is ready to manage problems.

In our next article, we consider how risk management and business continuity management intersect.

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