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ERMC Newsletter September 26, 2013 - Business Continuity:
The goal of Business Continuity is to get an organization back to its “normal” course of business
as soon as practical after an emergency event. The “last step” of emergency management is
RECOVERY – which implicitly ties into to the BCP process.
Business Continuity Plans (BCPs) can be intimidating stuff. Doing a Hazard & Risk
Assessment, then Business Impact Assessments and the heavy lifting of actually documenting
the Business Continuity Plan often scares the most intrepid planner.
We have some suggestions – that we must credit Mr. Nick Marsh for to help with this process.
In his article – “Why Have Business Contingency Plans”, he provides some great – keep it
simple advice. This includes:
Sit down and simply list all the potential issues you can see affecting your business.
Natural disasters? Transit strike? Malware? Utility failure? Others? (We like the scenarios –
gasoline spill in front of your office/sewage back up results in health authority closing your
office for 1 week to do clean up.)
Do some research on your list – the internet is a powerful source. Are there any hazards
that you have missed?
Split these risks into groups – try to group like risks together – e.g. power failure and virus
both impact IT hardware – recovery from these events could be similar.
Develop plans relating to how you would recover from these events/risks should they occur.
In those plans consider:
o SCOPE – what kind of emergency does the plan cover
o INITIATION – when do you activate/deploy the plan
o ACTIONS – what will you and your organization do to action the plan
o MAPPING – who will be responsible for what
Share your plan with your all relevant members of your staff so they all know what the
expectations are for them
Be sure to “COMMUNICATE” updates and the plan contents will all current and new staff
Keep the plan in print and e copy available and accessible.
For many businesses – following the above steps can help simplify the process of developing a
BCP.
If you are looking for help with any of the above steps, ERMC has the expertise to guide you
through the development of a BCP – and/or can develop a comprehensive BCP for you.