ContinuSys BCM Software Modules

Disruptions to your business can happen at any moment. Business Continuity is all about having a plan to ensure that your organization will continue to function with as little disruption as possible – even in the event of a catastrophic disaster.

Know your business – Determining The Current Organizational Environment

To ensure that Business Continuity plans are developed and maintained effectively, it is essential that they are aligned with the strategic business objectives of the organization. A good understanding of the business as it relates to Business Continuity is absolutely essential.

Business Continuity affects the entire breadth and width of an organization. For example. While IT is a major process of most organizations, IT is not the be-all end-all of an organization. Therefore, we need a means of gathering a true insight into what the organization actually does, how it does it, and when it needs to do it.

The diagram above shows the “Know Your Business” stage, which comprises the following modules.

MANAGEMENT

BUSINESS PROCESS

FACILITIES

INSURANCE

RISK ASSESSMENT

BUSINESS IMPACT ANALYSIS

INTERVIEWS

DEVELOPING STRATEGIES

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Develop Your Plan

This Stage should address:

The initial recovery and/or continuity of business operations. Those activities necessary to maintain operations in crisis-mode. The return of the business operations to the original locations/state. Design, develop, document, and implement the recovery tasks to ensure recovery within the recovery time objective (RTO) of your critical business processes listed in the Business Processes Module.

There are four sets of information required by every organization to ensure that they can effectively recover from any event. ‘Develop Your Plan’ enables you to define and assign these four critical sets of information. You can create groups of tasks, resources, contacts, and assets. Individual tasks, resources, contacts, and assets can be grouped together as a single unit. For example, you can group related tasks into a Task Group to make it easier to manage your plan, and you can group contacts who receive the same messages or sets of instructions together.

The above diagram shows the ‘Develop Your Plan’ stage, which comprises the following modules

RECOVERY TASKS

TASK GROUPS

RESOURCES

RESOURCES TEAMS

CONTACT

CONTACT GROUPS

ASSETS

ASSET GROUPS

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  • verify
    WHAT TASKS MUST BE PERFORMED TO SUPPORT THE RECOVERY EFFORT?WHAT TASKS MUST BE PERFORMED TO SUPPORT THE RECOVERY EFFORT?
  • verify
    EXACTLY HOW DO YOU PERFORM EACH OF THE TASKS?
  • verify
    WHAT IS THE APPROXIMATE TIME FRAME AND SEQUENCE WHEN TASKS ARE TO BE COMPLETED?
  • verify
    WHO IN THE ORGANIZATION IS RESPONSIBLE FOR EACH TASK AND WHO IS ASSIGNED TO DO THE WORK?
  • verify
    WHICH EXTERNAL ORGANIZATIONS AND PEOPLE WILL BE INVOLVED AND HOW TO REACH THEM?
  • verify
    WHAT FACILITIES, SERVICES, EQUIPMENT, AND OTHER ASSETS WE WILL REQUIRE AND WHERE DO WE GET THEM?

Implement Your Plan

Implementing The Recovery of Your Current Organizational Environment

Essentially, we are talking about responding to, escalating, and managing a disaster or crisis. How you respond to an event is one of the most critical components of the recovery process. It is critical to understand that you need to act upon a disaster or crisis quickly, so that you can meet the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of your critical Business Processes.

You can schedule and monitor the performance of your Business Continuity plan for a planned test or in an actual disaster situation. Once you have scheduled the tasks you have selected, you can monitor and report on the overall status of the test or actual recovery results.

How you handle the media can be a make or break situation. This needs careful preparation. Develop, coordinate, evaluate, and exercise plans to handle the media effectively during crisis situations.

The above diagram shows the ‘Implement Your Plan’ stage, which comprises the following modules.

DECLARING DISASTER

NOTIFY

MEDIA RELATIONS

EVENT LOG

SCHEDULE

TIMELINE

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Maintain Your Plan

Maintaining The Ability To Recover Your Current Organisational Environment

A Business Continuity Plan is only as valid as the information it contains. To ensure that the plan can be used effectively in an emergency, it must be accurate, up-to-date, and complete. It is a living document. It is imperative, therefore, that the plan be reviewed often and updated as necessary.

To ensure that the information in your Business Continuity plan is as current as possible, you need to schedule regular maintenance updates. We suggest that you prepare an annual schedule, that indicates a scheduled review of all resource, contact, and asset information.

This diagram shows the ‘Implement Your Plan’ stage, which comprises the following modules.

PLAN HISTORY

PLAN STATUS

PLAN VERIFICATION

RESOURCE TRAINING

EXCERCISE PLAN

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The actual frequency of maintenance will depend on your organization and the volume of information in your recovery plan. We suggest the following guidelines when scheduling maintenance:

Key Output

  • verify
    GIVEN THE CRITICAL NATURE OF RESOURCE INFORMATION, WE SUGGEST THAT YOU REVIEW ALL RESOURCE DETAILS AT LEAST EVERY TWO TO THREE MONTHS
  • verify
    AT A MINIMUM, YOU SHOULD REVIEW CONTACT DATA ON A QUARTERLY BASIS
  • verify
    YOU SHOULD VERIFY ASSET INFORMATION (WHICH IS MOST LIKELY TO BE IN A CONSTANT STATE OF CHANGE ON A MONTHLY OR BIMONTHLY BASIS.
  • verify
    THE COMBINATION OF RECOVERY PLAN TESTING AND A REGULAR DATA MAINTENANCE PROGRAM WILL GO A LONG WAY TO ENSURING A SUCCESSFUL RECOVERY

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