Business Continuity Management Consulting

Business Continuity Management (BCM) is the management process that oversees and implement strategies to address the risk of unexpected disruptions. It covers emergency response, risk management, planning, business continuity plan (BCP), training, testing and improvements.

There are three main areas in the processes of business continuity management:

1. Establishment

2. Implementation

3. Continuous improvement

These processes and their interactions are needed for an effective and comprehensive business continuity management that will help your organisation identify potential threats and recover from any form of disruptions or threats to your business functions. These three areas will be covered in greater detail under the steps in BCM.

BCM is a holistic management process that integrates various elements, namely Business Continuity Plan (BCP), Emergency Response, Crisis Management, Disaster Recovery, Risk Management, Business Impact Analysis, Resilience and Reputation Management.

BCP is an integral part of BCM that focuses on resuming operations during an unplanned disruption until it returns to normal again. The plan outlines the strategies and actions required by the organisation, which is more comprehensive than a disaster recovery plan. It contains contingency plans for every aspect of your business operations that may be affected, such as financial services, human resources, productions, inventory management, distributions, external suppliers and business partners etc. The BCP must detail the roles and responsibilities of various key stakeholders and be shared with top management for their agreement and sign-off.

This is often seen as one of the critical elements in BCM that require the most resources and management’s attention. It requires very urgent intervention to mobilise people and various resources to bring an incident under control quickly. An emergency can include natural disasters, pandemics or major accidents etc. The response usually focuses heavily on the protection and safety of lives, the company’s assets, health and the environment.

This is a process to manage a response to a crisis or major event affecting your business operations in order to stabilise and effectively control the situation and recover your operations in the quickest time possible. Crisis can be attributed to impending changes related to the country’s social, political, economic, environmental or security situation. It often causes uncertainty and threats to the organisation’s goals.

A key component of BCM is disaster recovery. It includes the activation of the recovery team to carry out the necessary actions in handling a specific disruption when an incident happens. For example, when there is an IT disruption to the organisation’s network servers or cyber attacks, the disaster recovery plan will include workarounds or the use of backup systems to recover critical IT assets or systems so that your business operations can continue until they are restored. An essential aspect of disaster recovery is reviewing and assessing the recovery time objective after the incident to address any shortcomings and revise the plan for future implementation.

This analysis is conducted to help your company identifies potential threats and possible risks that your organisation is exposed to and analyse the impact of the disruption if it happens. It is an essential element of BCM as it supports the business continuity process. It involves reviewing all critical activities within your business functions and the recovery point objective and time frame required to minimise the impact of a disruption.

Another key component of BCM is the creation of Risk Management to identify the broad array of potential risks to your organisation, covering resources (human, property, equipment and facilities), financial assets, operations, regulatory compliance, information security etc. The probability or likelihood of each risk occurring and their potential impact and severity have to be evaluated, assessed, ranked and measured against your organisation’s risk tolerance to prioritise which risks to address or mitigate first relative to the others.

BCM is a very fundamental and significant aspect of business operations in any organisation. BCM is itself a risk to the organisation if it is not managed effectively or adequately. Your organisation needs to be prepared for any unexpected disruptions or incidents so that it can protect or resume its operations and continue to function and recover from the adversity. Having an effective BCM process in place can help companies meet regulatory compliance and manage and protect their reputation and build organisational resilience, thereby protecting the brand and enhancing their competitive advantage.