What is Business Continuity Management?
This page describes Business Continuity Management
Business Continuity can be described in a few ways but is essentially the same thing:
“The act of anticipating incidents which will affect mission critical functions and processes for the organisation and ensuring that it responds to any incident in a planned and rehearsed manner” - Business Continuity Institute 2003
“(BCM) is a holistic management process that identifies potential impacts that threaten an organisation and provides a framework for building resilience and the capability for effective response which safeguards the interests of it’s key stakeholders, reputation, brand and value creating activities” Business Continuity Institute 2003
So business continuity is about:
- business survival
- mitigating the impact of disaster
- alternative capabilities for critical business processes
- not just IT.
This is all very well but it could seem like a lot of money, time and effort planning for something that might never happen so why should you plan?
“80% of companies who suffer a major disaster, and who do not have a continuity capability, go into liquidation within 18 months” – Norwich Union Risk Services 1999
“77% of companies who had experienced a disaster said that insurance provision only partially covered their total losses” – Performance concepts, continuity and recovery 2001
Having a planned response to a crisis will help you to ensure that key customers, your brand, reputation and key suppliers are maintained, as well as your long term survivability.
Business Continuity needs to be considered by small companies as well as larger corporations.
Incidents can have catastrophic effects on businesses with potential causes being accidents, criminal activity or natural disasters.
Nearly one in five businesses suffer a major disruption each year – which illustrates that this is a very real issue that should be considered by all businesses large and small.
Soon you may find that your Insurance Company, auditors and possibly customers may require you to have business continuity plans in place.
Related websites
Good Practice Guidelines (Business Continuity Institute website).
Last updated : 26/05/2009
