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Key Success Factors for BCM Programme
There are three key success factors for implementing a successful BCM Programme:
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Top Management Support is the first key success factor. When there is top management support, your BCM programme will get adequately funded which is very important if you want to sustain your programme.
With top management engagement, there will be visibility for your programme, and you are likely to get more participation and support from the various departments in your organization. You just cannot run a meaningful BCM programme alone without the full support of the top management.
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The ability to provide effective training is the second key success factor. The trainer must be able to conduct the training in an interesting and engaging way in order to make a serious subject like business continuity more palatable and relevant to the staff in the organization.
I would strongly recommend organizations who are considering embarking on a BCM Programme to first conduct a general awareness training to their organizations to garner general support for the programme.
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Choosing the right tools to manage your BCM programme is the final key success factor. There are a lot of documentations to manage in a typical BCM programme. If your organization only has a few departments, you can still survive with traditional office software like Excel and Word.
However, if your organization is large and spread across multiple locations, consider using a specialized BCM software that are now more commonly available in the market. Use the right tools that fit your budget and the size of your organization.
Importance of a Business Impact Analysis (BIA)
Business Impact Analysis or BIA, is an important BCM element in the ISO22301 standards for Business Continuity Management. During BIA, the organization can get the opportunity to systematically go through a process to identify, their recovery priorities, what products and services are critical to the organization and must be recovered during a disaster.
Basically in BIA, you identify what activities are important to the organization, what are the minimal resources required to recovery those activities and when to recovery those activities. Without first going through the BIA or Business Impact Analysis, you simply cannot produce a workable Business Continuity Plan.
How to Create an Effective Business Continuity Plan?
I have seen hundreds of business continuity plans and the most effective ones are those which have more flow diagrams and lesser words. In time of crisis, you are under pressure and spending a lot of time to read pages after pages of words is simply not effective. Use more flow diagrams to guide the readers to make the right decisions at the right time.
When creating your business continuity plans, the most effective way is to write it in a chronological timeline order. You should cover, pre-incident measures, procedures for immediate response when an incident happens, procedures to cover restoration and resumption of critical activities when a BCP is activated, and lastly, procedures for restoration and return to your workplace.
Speaker
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Raymond Ee |
