Business Continuity Planning

Recent man-made and natural disasters, including terrorist attacks, the Indian Ocean tsunami and the threat of pandemic flu, all serve to highlight the critical need for public and commercial organisations alike to address Business Continuity Planning (BCP). While the UK Government’s Civil Contingencies Act stipulates the requirement for thorough Business Continuity Management (BCM), and the new BSI standard (BS25999) will support the process of implementing best practice, it will not overcome some of the implicit major BCP issues. Arguably the most significant of these is understanding complexity – comprehending the interdependencies and interactions that define the business-critical processes of modern organisations; ensuring stakeholders are fully trained and aware of their roles and responsibilities, and managing the myriad of policies that directs your BCP.Effective BCP must be informed by a clear understanding of the critical processes that an organisation must conduct in order to achieve its business aims and key supporting objectives. To ensure processes are adequately protected, Business Continuity planners must have a clear and comprehensive understanding of all business-critical elements in the organisation, including their relationships, inter-dependencies and relative priority/criticality to the business, so risks can be identified, assessed and appropriately planned for. Incomplete Business Continuity Analysis would leave the organisation vulnerable to a critical failure.The main purpose of BCM is ...

Any business faces minor down times and major unknowns. It is important therefore that contingencies are built into the business processes to ensure that important information is protected in the event of a planned or unplanned closure of the business. It has once been said that any investment into a Business Continuity Program (BCP) is a waste of valuable resources. And it is true that if a strict ROI calculation is attributed to such a program it is likely that it would not provide a sufficient justification for such an investment. However, anybody who has experienced a cessation of business activity will know that not having a BCP spells disaster and in fact it is a small cost to bear in relationship to the losses the business incurs during such an event.Our recent history is filled with events that “were unthinkable” but that actually happened and which are all reminders that a BCP should not be disregarded. It is an accepted fact that following a major fire almost half of businesses fail to reopen and then close to a third of those that do reopen do not survive beyond three years. Those are everyday examples and the list could easily go on and on building up an unassailable argument for a BCP.There ...

Business continuity means to continue your business normally even if there have been natural disruptions, crisis or even natural calamity. It simply means planning a system that greatly helps your business continue and grow even after the toughest of conditions which further prevents any probable disaster. Now-a-days our life and the environmental conditions in which we live is just unpredictable and due to natural calamities like floods, earthquakes, tsunami etc, or man-made disasters like terrorists attacks, bombing etc. are ruining and destroying our Mother Nature. These problems have become quite common and after a period when everything returns back to normal we often wonder if we can successfully continue our business operations as before. Due to these enormous natural and man-made calamities, the first thing that is seriously affected is the Internet and our connection across the world due to Internet. This causes terrible loss to businesses and humankind. In order to prevent such a situation where you really become helpless and start loosing hopes, it is sensible to schedule a perfect and effective business plan. You need to plan the resources wisely and take proactive measures so as to help your business survive and flourish as ever before and this can be done by having a lot of communication channels for ...

Entering the computer age, a disaster recovery plan was a concept and not much else. The idea was that a plan would be in place for the day when things went wrong. This worked at the time when computers in world numbered in the 100's - there were not more computers than people in an office.Organizations got bigger and computer departments were suddenly as big as the sales department, more IT consultants were bringing in more hardware and software and no one really noticed the day that computers had a greater value than the people in the office.In that first phase when there was a mainframe, a form of backup was done on a regular basis, the backed up material was moved to a safe location and the idea was that if the mainframe went down, then spare time could be used on a different mainframe in a different location.Now a 50 person office has 75 computers; at least.Now there is a complex telephone system that is just a little gray box with some wires coming out of it, and no one cares what it does because it works.All those little wires pass through a closet that was originally built just for the wires, but hey, with the space issues this ...

Adapting your business to a foreign country's culture, is not an easy process the first time you try. You will not be able to anticipate the stumbling blocks that would not happen 'back hone'. More importantly you will not know what you need to do to adapt yourself to the new challenges and tasks at hand. You will need to develop a Small Business Action Plan for your first effort with International Business Development.Are you a small business and want to develop your international business? Do you have a limited budget to develop your international sales? Do you already have domestic clients but are just starting to reach out to international clients?There are numerous strategies that exist to get you more international clients. A lot depends on your business and your commitment.Here is an action plan to start your first international business development strategy:1. Internationalize your websiteIt is important to make sure your website is not pushing your international visitors away from you. Bad or non-existent cross cultural communication can easily do this.You can create a website specifically targeting an international audience, in your language. This is a business decision and will depend on the nature of your business and your clients. Companies in non-English speaking countries will often create an English ...

Business continuity planning is essential in establishing a firm basis for a specific enterprise's ability to recover and resume business operations in the event of an unexpected upheaval or disruption of the normal status quo of daily operations. Failure should never be an option and the only way to prevent failure is to incorporate a preparedness plan to supersede the negative impact of unexpected disaster scenarios.Business continuity planning processes are designed to ensure the availability of critical services at any given time in order to prevent significant losses to the institution. A single incidence of the cessation of normal business operations due to the loss of data and technological resources can paralyze an enterprise, crippling it beyond repair.Business continuity planning begins with an evaluation and assessment of the institution's current business plan in an effort to redesign it for maximum potential. Updating your business continuity planning is essential in keeping pace with your technological advances or regulatory changes in order to prevent the oversight of business continuity. Planning is centered on the key facets of the business and often encompasses testing strategies, communication strategies, business operation processes, and technology processes in its implementation.Addressing the major concerns of an enterprise is the core of a successful approach that safeguards the continuity of data ...

Business continuity (BC) has scaled the heights of the boardroom agenda to become the business issue of the 21st century. Companies are realising that ‘downtime’ – for whatever reason - is unacceptable. Reputation, turnover and a business’ very existence can be determined by its ability to respond to any operational disruption – whatever the cause!Causes of operational disruption can be many and various; freak weather conditions, terrorist attacks, public order disturbances, criminal activity, accidents and so forth. The list is endless but, thankfully, most of these occurrences are rare.One phenomenon that occurs with increasing frequency, however, is power failure. Its effects can be just as devastating and an obstacle to business continuity. Power problems and power cuts are now the most common cause of business disruption according to research by business continuity provider SunGard.In July 2006, The Secretary of State’s Second Report to Parliament on Security of Gas and Electricity Supply in Great Britain from the DTI, Between April 2005 and March 2006, the total number of customer interruptions was around 21 million and total number of customer minutes lost 1,966 million.Power continuity is normally part of a business continuity strategy but given the fact that businesses are more likely to suffer a power cut than a terrorist attack, shouldn’t it be ...

 The Small Business Recession Plan “B”: How to Create the Six-Part Contingency Plan That Will Help You Guide Your Business Through the StormIf you’re a small business owner, your list of worries seems never-ending. For starters, consumer confidence is down and your sales are starting to reflect that reality. And as experts predict a deep recession, it’s doubtful things will start looking up anytime soon. Yes, you’ve been wringing your hands and obsessing over the financial news for months, while simultaneously scrambling to keep your customers happy and your business strong. But action is the best antidote for agonizing—and now is the perfect time to create a recession contingency plan that will help you guide your business through any future rough patches.Too often, when the economy goes south, a small business owner is paralyzed by anxiety and isn’t able to act quickly enough to save his or her company. Having a well conceived contingency plan in place gives you peace of mind when trouble hits and enables you to act quickly.For small business owners, contingency planning is one of the best and most effective preventive actions you can take in a down economy.Contingency planning will allow you to make the best possible decisions for your business if things continue to get worse ...

Small and medium-sized enterprises tend to get ignored when talking about business continuity planning. The planning is more prosaic. The challenges are fewer. And most importantly, their budgets are smaller.But of course, the same principles that apply to large businesses also apply to the small ones. We at Oppello are an IT consultancy that specialises in looking after small to medium sized businesses. And business continuity planning is a must for companies of all sizes. A small firm that loses all its data will go out of business, just as surely as a larger one.If anything smaller firms become more vulnerable to crises because larger companies are geographically more diverse – knocking out your operations in say Edinburgh is not as business critical when your offices in London can take some of the overload.A few years ago business continuity planning was only regularly undertaken by the larger corporations, nowadays SMEs are more than likely to make some kind of preparation. Part of the problem, however, is that smaller companies are typically less aware of the correct procedures than larger firms where systems have been developed.Initial IT auditFrequently we’ll find small companies that have thought about continuity issues but not implemented them fully, On our initial audit we’ll find, for example, that IT ...

To overcome business continuity challenges, a business will be required to formulate emergency or disaster management plans, also referred to as business continuity. Further, businesses also need to ensure that the plans prove effective, for which they can use the highly effective concepts and methodologies of Six Sigma.Six Sigma can certainly help in devising the most effective contingency plans because it follows a statistical approach for solving problems rather than using gut feelings, that can prove to be wrong.Employing DMAIC For Business ContinuityMost businesses nowadays are using the DMAIC (define, measure, analyze, improve, control) methodology for devising contingency plans for the future because the methodology is supposedly the best project management tool available. DMAIC was originally devised as a method for improving the efficiency of business processes, but now businesses are employing it for managing all types of projects, be it a quality improvement project or a business continuity project.The DMAIC Process For Business ContinuityWhen DMAIC is being used for managing a business continuity project, the first step involves defining all the potential threats that can affect the company's productivity and profitability. Once the threats have been defined, the next step involves measuring the exact effects that each of these potential threats will have on the business. This is done with the ...