It won’t happen to us

How many times have we heard that statement? Bad things happen in business. Get over it. Disruptions can be caused by many unexpected and unwanted incidents. The challenge is to plan contingencies, without actually knowing what may happen.

The answer is to plan risk response strategies at a more generic level and enable room for dynamic decision making. Just consider:

• Operational process interruption;
• Staff unable or unwilling to reach the normal workplace;
• Loss is essential information feed or leakage of company confidential material;
• Damage to something or someone vital to operation of the business;
• Building, utilities or physical infrastructure seriously damaged;
• Supply chain failure, including that of a large customer;
• Financial change, which could seriously affect planned or existing operation;
• Failure to “abide” by legal requirements or regulatory controls, bring fines or closure  

The devil is in the detail so don’t go there. Too many organizations spend much time planning response for every eventuality to the finest degree and often fail to finish business continuity implementation as a result. You can embellish and fine tune your business continuity response once initial deployment has been successfully completed.

The most vital thing is to embark upon design of a robust “Business Continuity Management System”. A BCMS contains much more than a Business Continuity Plan and spans much wider than control of IT and telecommunications failures. People, business procedures, abiding by legislation, physical premises and external forces must all come into consideration. Without too much detail, just initially ensure that all of these eventualities have someone assigned to deal with anything that may come along.

“There is no time like the present” is a phrase I often heard as a boy and the same is true for Business Continuity today. Amongst a vast array of risk profession statements, one sticks out in my mind.

On average and globally, a business will suffer from some form of major disruption or serious incident at least once within every five years. Without advance planning, many never recover.

When will it be your turn? The solution is easy; you just need to start now.