Do you have plans that will protect your business through any disruption?

Terrorist activity, ecological disasters and major failures have all served to create a heightened general awareness of the potential impact of a disaster.

But from limited internal failures to dramatic significant events, all disruption needs to be properly managed in order to minimise the impact on your organisation and its customers. As market competition increases, the ability to be "out of service" for any period of time no longer exists. Efficient and effective management of an event could be the diff e rence between success and failure for your company.

Business Continuity Management requires an understanding of your risks, business processes, priorities, supporting technology as well as internal and external dependencies. From this base, it is possible to design a recovery strategy that will enable your organisation to overcome any unforeseen event.

Our Business Continuity Management lifecycle is designed to address all aspects of Business Continuity Management. In essence our independent services fit into 6 categories supported by a framework of Project Management:

  • Risk Assessment

Threats to your organisation could precipitate a chain of events that result in the failure of your business. By analysing the risks we can support you in identifying effective mitigation practices and help reduce the likelihood of having to use your recovery plans.
  • Business Impact Analysis

The Business Impact Analysis identifies the criticality of processes, enables priorities to be established and a strategy to be devised that will ensure recovery in line with business needs. Conducting a Business Impact Analysis enables you to identify appropriate recovery strategies to protect your business.
  • Continuity Strategy

Having assessed your recovery needs, we can assist you to develop and implement the appropriate strategy. By utilizing the needs identified in the Business Impact Analysis and considering your legislative obligations, we can assist you to develop a recovery strategy that is cost effective while still meeting the needs of the business.
  • Continuity Plan Development

We will work with you to design customised plans for recovering your key business functions and the associated technology. This will include strategic plans to help you to manage the crisis when it occurs.
  • Training Testing & Maintenance

Having developed your continuity strategy and documented your plans, we can ensure that the plans are workable and deliver the needs of the business by implementing an effective testing and maintenance programme. We can also assist with educating and training your staff by providing general or bespoke education, scenario plan testing and crisis management exercises designed specifically for your organisation.
  • Advisory & Support Services

In addition to our core BCM services, we underpin this with additional value added assistance including:

BCM Reviews
You may have a mature Business Continuity Plan but do you know if your recovery strategy has kept pace with your changing business and legislative requirements. If you are not s u re, we can provide an independent assessment of your recovery strategy and recommend enhancements, using our audit experience, market knowledge and industry best practice as a benchmark.

Supply Chain Assurance
You may have a refined and well rehearsed Business Continuity Strategy but does your key supplier? A failure of a key supplier could be as damaging as a failure within your own organisation. We can assist you by conducting independent assessments of the Business Continuity strategy of your supply chain.

Continuity Programme Outsourcing
With a mature Business Continuity Strategy in place, you may be at the stage where your main requirement is regular maintenance, update and testing. This may not be sufficient to justify a full time resource. We can assist you by providing a programme of regular involvement from our team of diversely skilled Business Continuity Management professionals.

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.