What Is Business Continuity Planning & Why Should I Care

Welcome back to our Disaster Recovery / Business Continuity Planning Blog.

Enough!!

Time to stop wasting time and get down to it!!

What is Business Continuity Planning and why should I expend scarce company resources on it when I have more immediate problems to deal with.

At the risk of sounding like a guy with a hammer looking for a nail to pound, Business Continuity Planning is one more facet in the multi-disciplinary lense you use to examine and improve your business. I firmly believe that incorporating a Business Continuity Planning mindset can yield additional benefits ranging from process improvements to competitive advantage.

Simply stated, Business Continuity Planning is a set of disciplines concerned with managing an organization's ability to continue or re-establish a pre-determined and agreed upon level of service to support business requirements, following an interruption to the business. This includes:
• Ensuring business survival by reducing the impact of a disaster or major failure
• Reducing the vulnerability and risk to the business by effective risk analysis and risk management
• Preventing the loss of Customer and User confidence.

By way of introduction, let's have a look at the Business Continuity Life-cycle.

Stage 1 – Initiation → Chances of success are greatly enhanced if this comes from the Board of Directors level. The Board is responsible for setting policy, allocating responsibilities, directing and monitoring the Business Continuity Program. Senior Management is responsible for managing Business Continuity, accepting deliverables, communicating and maintaining program awareness.
Bottomline: These are the folks that say Business Continuity Planning is important to the company and then provide and preserve the funding to do something about it. Without them it's all just good intentions.

Stage 2 – Define requirements and strategy → Generally Junior Management is responsible for undertaking Business Continuity analysis, defining deliverables, contracting for services, managing testing and assurance. This includes:
 Business Impact Analysis
 Risk Assessment
 Business Continuity Strategy
Bottomline: This is where we figure out our bag of hammers and decide how to deal with them. Or, in english, within the scope of the current project; What events might impact our ability to do business? What does it cost when we are unable to conduct normal business operations? When do we need to be back in business? What resources do we need to get back in business? How are we going to get back in business?

Stage 3 – Implementation → Supervisors and staff are responsible for developing deliverables, negotiating services, performing testing, developing and operating processes and procedures. This includes:
 Organization and Implementation Planning
 Implement Stand-by Arrangements
 Develop Recovery Plans
 Implement Risk Reduction Measures
 Develop Procedures
 Initial Testing

If you have more resources than time, and a really good project manager, Implementation can be split into multiple projects that can be run simultaneously. If resources are the issue then running the same multiple projects one after another works as well.
Bottomline: Finally, we're clear for take-off. Time to get down to work, believe me there will be lots of it. If you are short on staff resources, consultants can help bridge the gap.

Stage 4 – Operational Management → The ultimate success of your Business Continuity Planning efforts is dependant on your ability to evolve it into an ongoing Business Continuity Program. The purpose of such a program is to keep your continuity plan alive. Components of the ongoing effort include:
 Assurance
 Education & Awareness
 Review, Audit & Improvement
 Testing
 Change Management
 Training
Bottomline: Unless you want your plan to become quickly out-dated you need processes to update, test and improve the plan. And, you need to train your staff so they know and can execute their roles when required.

I hope you are finding this interesting. Next time we'll get into more detail regarding some of the major issues, some of which you may already be facing.

If you run a business that makes use of computers or data and you need help with Backup and Recovery, IT Disaster Recovery or Business Continuity Planning... pick up the phone and call 226-220-0472, we can help you.

Fred Spitzig