Business Continuity
What it business continuity?
Business Continuity Institute (BCI) Definition:
"A holistic management process that identifies potential impacts that threaten an organisation and provides a framework for building resilience with the capability for an effective response that safeguards the interests of its key stakeholders, reputation, brand and value-creating activities" (BCI 2005)
or:
"A necessary and important management process that helps keep an organisation going, even in the most trying of times"
Its purpose is to ensure we are all able to respond sensibly, both as individuals and as an organisation. Since the planning process tells us where the risks are highest and the potential greatest, we are better able to foresee problems and guard against them developing into serious disruptions.
Up to 90% of businesses that lose data caused by a disruption or disaster are forced to close down within two years.
Why have a business continuity plan?
What do you do, for example, if your place of business catches fire? Some hard decisions will have to be made, and made quickly. For instance: What do you do with all your staff? How do you tell the community/customer that you cannot provide 'business/service as usual'? How do you meet important deadlines? The list of questions grows, and so do the levels of uncertainty and anxiety. Without a Business Continuity Plan you will have to rely on an ad-hoc approach to deal with these, and the many other issues that will present themselves.
The main advantages of a planned response include: Identification of critical systems and information in advance of an event, so that an informed decision can be taken on the extent to which such systems should be protected Definition of the roles of individual staff members Determination of the resources required to maintain a minimum level of service to the community/customer.