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Within the business community, there is a growing sense of urgency to be prepared before a disaster strikes. A significant, sustained interruption of enterprise operations or information flow will have a strong adverse effect upon an organization. However, according to the research firm Gartner, fewer than 30 percent of Fortune 2000 companies actually have a full business continuity plan in place.
Business continuity planning (BCP) addresses maintaining the viability of the business enterprise during an emergency. It is a holistic, cost-effective means of preparing to respond to a disaster.
Business continuity plans enable organizations to protect their employees and assets and resume operations in an expedient and controlled fashion. Business continuity plans contain a series of key elements:
- A risk management program that includes clearly defined roles and responsibilities, including support organization functions
- Specific incident/emergency management responses that identify assembly areas at a safe distance from the site of the incident
- Accessible recovery locations and emergency operations centers
- A process for automatically switching telephone and data lines
- Manual processes for continuing operations until technology is repaired
- Processes to deal with the loss of information that are not available from backup data
- Testing of the business continuity plans on an end-to-end basis
- A BCP awareness program
- A review process to keep the BCP up-to-date
Developing a sound business continuity plan is crucial to preventing even a minor disruption from turning into a catastrophe. A process model that effectively responds to an incident may prevent the emergence of a crisis.
What Will You Say When They Ask What Happened?
A BCP program begins with a business impact analysis (BIA). A BIA identifies the effects of a disaster upon an organization. This includes such areas as: loss of revenue, impact upon customers, regulatory issues, impact upon employees, and other business interruption consequences. With accurate information from a BIA, an organization will be ready to develop a sound business continuity plan that will provide a cost-benefit approach to recovery strategies.
Because a BCP program is an organization's strategic response to an emergency, senior management must address such issues as:
- Do we know what our business recovery objectives are?
- Do our strategies match our business needs?
- Is our plan all encompassing, including business operations, technology, and suppliers?
- Do our employees know what steps to take in the event of an emergency?
- Have we identified the gaps between our current recovery capabilities and our recovery needs?
- Are our plans easy to maintain?
- Have we required our suppliers/vendors to implement a strong and viable business continuity program?
- Have we included administrative support functions in the recovery effort, e.g., human resources, insurance, legal, security, etc.?
- Is there a clear delegation of roles and responsibilities in place?
- Is there a centralized means to monitor plan development, while decentralizing creation and plan maintenance capabilities?
- Is there a structured testing methodology?
Who's Looking Out for You?
Marsh can assist clients in identifying critical business processes and exploring strategies that include:
- A strong business continuity plan that maps out an organizational structure and lists distinct roles and responsibilities
- An integrated approach combining Business Continuity, Emergency Response, and Crisis Management
- A business continuity strategy that is based upon the needs of each firm's business functions
- Well documented plans, including information technology, business relocation, manual workarounds, and data restoration
Marsh consultants have deep experience in business continuity and understand the importance of complying with regulatory requirements and fiduciary responsibilities in order to avoid potential penalties and litigation. With a global network of certified BCP consultants — coupled with our independence — we are
able to bring to bear the BCP solution that is right for your organization. Our BCP methodology uses an Excel- and Word-based toolkit that eliminates the financial
impact of costly software and the requisite training.
If you have any questions or would like additional information, please contact us.
Kroll, which recently became part
of Marsh, offers services that complement Risk Consulting's. Learn about Kroll's
business continuity capabilities.
If you are seeking information about insurance and related services, please visit marsh.com.
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