Business Continuity Planning Part 3
Hello readers of the Silentblast blog and welcome back to the final part on the basics of Business Continuity Planning. I will be rounding out the remainder of the Business Continuity Planning Cycle but truly if some of you have done your homework and I hope you have; you will have Google’d some of the information I provided and it leads to valuable resources out there on the Internet.
Business Continuity Planning Cycle Continued…
Testing and Acceptance – You can have all the plans and best intentions in place or even in your mind but if you don’t try them in some measure as a test to you and your staff and business processes; the plan is not worth the paper it’s written on. In my professional line of work as a Risk Manager I often encounter businesses that have gone through great efforts and money to produce literally volumes of plans and procedures; yet have not tried testing of the plan in any way. How are you going to know truly if the plan you formulated is going to work? You won’t until it’s too late and that is usually when some form of crisis or disaster has struck.
I would argue that aside from the thought of having some form of business continuity plan in place; that the Testing and Acceptance of the plan is equally important. So don’t just create a plan and cross your fingers hoping it will work; chances are it won’t because the testing and acceptance phase of Business Continuity Planning will show very clearly to you and your employees what works and what doesn’t work.
Acceptance -We all get that memo right… you know the one; from some office, someone you may have never met, all of sudden telling you, “there are changes.” Chances are, after reading it; you roll your eyes and go, “whatever,” and file it. Change and acceptance to change is hard for some to embrace; especially when you may be implementing something like a Business Continuity Plan. Most employees or people will understand the meanings of the words but not the concept or importance of Business Continuity as you or a company would see it. So getting employees and staff to “buy in” to the concepts and importance of business continuity is very important. Why? Because they will be the ones that will be charged most often in performing the tasks and functions necessary in order to get your business processes back up and running.
Depending on the nature of your business will determine how often you test the plan. Most businesses that have some form of business continuity plan usually do testing of some kind on given business processes anywhere between 6 months to annually.
Maintenance - The maintenance of the business continuity plan depending on the domains associated with your company business continuity plan will determine to a degree your Maintenance phase. In brief the Maintenance process is the continual updating of the Business Continuity Plan as your company changes.
These can be broken down in some examples:
-Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Company employees change or are promoted to higher positions of responsibilities
-Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Changes with clients and contract details
-Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Changes in suppliers that form part of your business processes
-Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Department changes, additions, product/services additions
-Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Company investments or mission statements
Some other factors to consider in your Maintenance phase of Business Continuity are:
-Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Are all your work processes for absolutely critical business functions documented
-Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Has there been any changes in those functions
-Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Is there checklists specific to functions and staff for them to follow
-Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Is the documentation and recovery tasks supporting the recovery and allowing staff to meet the goals of the business continuity plan
Now this may all seem like a lot of work to do. It is actually; but so is trying to recover from a crisis or disaster from scratch with no plan to help guide you. The idea however is to keep it simple and manageable your Business Continuity Plan and not have it morph into binders upon binders of information and processes that would take just as long to read as it did to create. Stick with basic things like checklists and step by step instructions. It is easier to manage for the people formulating the BCP and easier for the people to implement the BCP should a disaster or crisis strike.
Now to associate BCP with Silentblast and their services is fairly straight forward and easy to explain. If your business is primarily online; Silentblast’s hosting services are perfect for business. Information that is critical to your continued business success is stored off your physical business address. That information is mirrored and backed up automatically on a daily basis. There are lots of hosting companies on the internet, some are really cheap and it may be enticing from a cost perspective to be attracted to that but be wary. What is their Business Continuity Plan? If they don’t know what it is; move to someone else.
The same can be applied to email. With Silentblasts hosting services, you get email and while it can be downloaded to your computer and set up in an email program like Outlook; you can configure your emails to be forwarded to several email addresses, such as a Google Mail account, or retained directly on the server. In the event your computer goes down; you can literally use any computer to get on the internet, and still be in touch with your clients and suppliers.
Well I hope you have drawn useful information from these series of articles on Business Continuity. If your thinking about it; that’s a good thing. If you are considering on doing it, even better. If you commence the process; that’s great.
Silentblast Interactive - Toronto Web Design and Development
Canadian owned and operated, Silentblast is a professional web design and development company in Toronto serving small and mid-sized companies in the GTA, Brampton, Vaughan, North York, Markham, Mississauga, Oakville, Richmond Hill, Scarborough and Barrie, Ontario, Canada. Silentblast also develops mobile web site design and development and mobile applications for the iPhone and other mobile phone platforms.
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July 20th, 2009 at 7:34 pm
Continuous planning will be needed to ensure that you catch the current and future trend of the industry and economy. Thank you.
August 3rd, 2009 at 7:59 pm
Well; yes, but in terms of business continuity continuous planning and working the plans from a business continuity perspective is more the ability of being able to remain in business in the time of a crisis or disaster. Business planning from a generalist perspective ensuring your remain competitive is part of business absolutely and always as a business there should be provisions for observing current and future trends of your industry, geographic location factors, logistics, administration, ability to be competitive, marketable and a host of other variables not withstanding the trends of the consumer and the economy.
Take care,
Chris
Silentblast Interactive
August 29th, 2009 at 9:35 am
Excellent tool! Thank you.
September 1st, 2009 at 5:34 pm
Go on working man, you are great!
September 2nd, 2009 at 8:45 am
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September 29th, 2009 at 9:14 am
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