What is Business Continuity Management?

Posted By on August 22nd, 2019

We have blogged about business continuity planning many times. And how as a business you can go about creating an effective business continuity plan

One thing which is key to business continuity planning is that it is a constant, ongoing process. Simply writing a business continuity plan isn’t enough. It needs to evolve to reflect the current status of your business as well as the risk factors your business may face.

With this in mind, we take a look at business continuity management (BCM) and in particular the business continuity management lifecycle.

What is Business Continuity Management?

ISO 22301 is the international standard for Business Continuity Management (BCM). It defines business continuity management as:

“Holistic management process that identifies potential threats to an organisation and the impacts to business operations those threats, if realised, might cause, and which provides a framework for building organisational resilience with the capability of an effective response that safeguards the interests of its key stakeholders, reputation, brand and value-creating activities.”

The standard sets out 5 stages which it sees as integral to BCM and as a result the creation of a business continuity plan.

What are the stages of business continuity management?

The ISO 22301 sets out 5 stages for the BCM lifecycle:

  1. Impact Analysis – this involves carrying out a risk assessment. Defining the risks and threats to your business continuity. In addition, you will need to determine which of your business functions are deemed critical and non-critical when it comes to your recovery process.
    Ideally this stage will also see you document impact scenarios for the risks and threats identified
  2. Solution Design – Here you will define your plans including the responsible staff members and a chain of command, work sites you will relocate to (also referred to as a secondary work site), the applications and data needed at your secondary work site and how you will ensure the relevant data is available to the secondary site
  3. Implementation – Through creation of a business continuity plan,the agreed strategies and tactics to be used during recovery from a disaster can be documented.
  4. Testing and gaining business acceptance – All plans require testing before you can be confident that they work in practice. What looks good on paper may not work in reality. And the worst time to find this out is when you are mid disaster. It’s also important to get buy in from across the business so that your business continuity plan is taken seriously at all levels of your organisation.
  5. Maintenance – this will ensure that your business continuity plan remains in line with your business; the way it is operating and the risks you may face. Tasks include confirming the information included in the plan (such as staff), staff awareness and training for staff named as responsible/critical in your business continuity plan

Why is business continuity management important to your business?

No business wants to think about the worst happening. But unfortunately, disaster can strike any business. From natural events such as flooding, or fires through to human error. Whatever the event, your business should be prepared, aware of the actions to take and the business areas to prioritise if you should be impacted.  

Put simply, a business with a well thought out and well-maintained business continuity plan will be better equipped to deal with recovery following a disaster than a business without a plan.

At First Recovery, we can be the specialist support team at your side in the event of a disaster. Get in touch with us today to see how we can help assure your business continuity.