How We Approach Business Continuity Management

Here's how Forbes Calamity Prevention approaches business continuity planning (BCP):

We like to start with a Business Impact Analysis (BIA). In a BIA, we help your company estimate the impact of an interruption on its income, employees, customers and its reputation. We collect this information through meetings with managers, interviews with employees, and by distributing questionnaires to selected individuals. Questionnaires can be distributed in print, by email or on the Internet.

It is essential to estimate Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Minimum Operating Requirements (MOR) during the Business Impact Analysis. These help to determine which continuity strategy would be best for the recovery of each business activity or department. Strategies might include moving to another location, delaying the performance of some tasks, or transferring some work to another office.

We can help your company's executives estimate impact and recovery requirements in as little as one morning or afternoon meeting.

Some companies then want to identify and quantify the potential threats to their businesses. That process is called a Risk Analysis (RA). In risk analysis, we examine threats into three (3) categories: natural threats, technical threats and human threats. A threat can be a power failure, a sprinkler discharge, a software virus or the loss of a big customer, for examples. Many companies already know what their most likely threats are, and omit the Risk Analysis.

Definition
A disaster is a sudden, unplanned, severe interruption of normal business activities.

We assess risk by estimating the likelihood that selected threats will happen to your business, and estimating the impact on your business if those threats were to happen. Some threats have a low likelihood of occurrence, but a very high impact if they occur. Others are more likely, but have lower impact on your business when they happen. Our experience as professional planners adds significant value to the process of helping your company decide which of the many possible risks your business continuity plan (BCP) should address.

When we know the risks and the impact, we propose appropriate continuity strategies to meet the cost-benefit and recovery time requirements you have approved during the BIA process. Having a recovery site at least ten (10) kilometers away is often recommended, especially for IT systems. Suspending some parts of your business temporarily may also be an appropriate strategy. Serving customers and receiving revenue are always top priorities.

Then we write a plan based on your business objectives and the continuity strategies your company chooses. We write your plans using software you choose; we can even publish your company's BCP on a private BCP intranet web site for your company, which we setup and maintain for you.

A business continuity plan (BCP) isn't just for computer systems. We call that a "disaster recovery" (DR) plan. A BCP covers your staff, telephone, business activities and important documents or records. It covers the whole organization, not just the IT department.

To prepare your BCP, we ask questions like:

  • What could go wrong? What are the possible threats to your facilities and business functions?

  • What is likely to go wrong? How could you reduce the risk of something going wrong?

  • If something went wrong, how would it affect your business?

  • What are the best continuity strategies to achieve your Recovery Time Objectives? For example, if you want customers to be able to reach you by telephone within one (1) day after a disaster, have you selected an appropriate strategy for your telephone system to make that possible?

  • Is your plan in writing?

  • Is your plan available to all employees on the Internet?

  • Has your company practiced or tested your BCP in the last six (6) months?

Our Sample Approach document in Adobe® Acrobat® PDF format explains our methodology in a few pages. To see how that methodology becomes the specific steps to complete a business continuity plan, please download and read our Sample Project Schedule. Both of these, and several other sample documents, can be downloaded from the “BCP Documents” section of this web site.

We follow the Good Practice Guidelines of The Business Continuity Institute (BCI) of the U.K.

Need help? In Singapore, call: +65 6324-3091  Fax: +65 6324-3093  Email: chris.tan@calamity.com.sg 
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