Streamline the traditional approach to make BCP development manageable and repeatable.
Recent crises have increased executive awareness and internal pressure to create a BCP. Industry and government-driven regulations require evidence of sound business continuity practices.
Customers demand their vendors provide evidence of a workable BCP prior to signing a contract. IT leaders, because of their cross-functional view and experience with incident management and Disaster Recovery (DR), are often asked to lead BCP efforts.
BCP requires input from multiple departments with different and sometimes conflicting objectives. There are typically few, if any, dedicated resources for BCP, so it can’t be a full-time, resource-intensive project.
As an IT leader you have the skill set and organizational knowledge to lead a BCP project, but ultimately business leaders need to own the BCP – they know their processes, and therefore, their requirements to resume business operations better than anyone else.
The traditional approach to BCP is a massive project that most organizations can’t execute without hiring a consultant. To execute BCP in-house, carve up the task into manageable pieces as outlined in this blueprint, which has been broken down into 3 overarching, separate, yet related “sub-plans”.
1. IT Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP)
A plan to restore IT application and infrastructure services following a disruption.
2. BCP for Each Business Unit
A set of plans to resume business processes for each business unit.
3. Crisis Management Plan
A plan to manage a wide range of crises, from health and safety incidents to business disruptions to reputational damage.
Implement a structured and repeatable process that you apply to one business unit at a time to keep BCP planning efforts manageable. Conduct a pilot and use the results to identify gaps in your recovery plans and reduce overall continuity risk while continuing to assess specific risks as you repeat the process with additional business units.
Enable business leaders to own the BCP going forward by developing a template that the rest of the organization can use. Finally, leverage BCP outcomes to refine IT DRP recovery objectives and achieve DRP-BCP alignment.
We believe in listening to our clients and facilitating robust dialogue to learn the full picture of the project from multiple perspectives. We craft solutions that are tailored to our client’s needs, emphasizing a robust process that engages the correct stakeholders throughout the project so that once it’s complete, our clients can continue to manage it successfully.
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