Alexandre Guindani, CBCP, SBCI

http://www.rugbrasil.com/

Ten tips to building an effective Business Continuity Program

Many people believe that the creation of a Business Continuity structure itself provides security to the enterprise and makes it safe from interruption, bringing the feeling of task accomplished.

Unfortunately, business continuity is not a mere project; it must be seen as a state of mind. Business continuity, to be truly effective, requires cultural changing.

Also, to be honest, business continuity is not fascinating, nor does it excite or engage people. And this, in my understanding, is the greatest challenge of the professionals dedicated to this subject: to make everyone take part and get deeply involved within the activities that turn the BCP into something else than just a bunch of paper.

It’s a long stony path, but some principles are basic to all those who fly the business continuity flag. Below are the ones I find most important:

1. Do not believe blindly in BCM — many organizations believe that it should be enough to have a BCM structure. BCM and all its plans are useful only with adequate updating, exercising and training.

2. Do not restrict the scope — an incomplete plan will not meet all the needs for business process recovery. The plans need to cover processes, systems, information, infrastructure, and key-people replacement, if necessary.

3. Prioritize whatever is critical — it is necessary to prioritize critical business processes. The prioritization of no-vital processes jeopardizes business survival.

4. Update and test plans — the plans should be updated and tested regularly, especially when there are changes in business processes or to important systems.

5. Be sponsored — someone must administrate, set priorities, and organize the BCM, always supported by the enterprise high administration. This is a key point on success.

6. Communicate with others — it is necessary to create a permanent communication channel with all enterprise sectors.

7. Do not forget about the backup — it is necessary to keep backups of all vital registries stored in an alternative site away from the main working building.

8. Be transparent in your actions — it is necessary to communicate to all stakeholders what is being implemented concerning business continuity.

9. Properly assess your contractors — many enterprises do not evaluate how much they depend on outsourced services, whose processes interruption might cause catastrophic effects.

10. Get the Business sector engaged – Business Continuity is not IT’s responsibility only. All the enterprise’s business processes must get involved to BCM’s activities.