The importance of business continuity management

A number of recent events such as flooding in Yorkshire, Humberside and Morpeth, July 7 bombings and tropical storms in the USA have highlighted the varied risks to which organisations are exposed.  Such events can impact all organisations, and not just those based in major cities.

A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) helps an organisation mitigate the impact of such events by limiting the magnitude of any losses, minimising the extent of an interruption, identifying critical functions and resources and ultimately helping resume operations as soon as possible following a ‘disaster’.

Recent research by the Business Continuity Institute highlighted that 80% of businesses without a BCP that were hit by a major incident either never re-opened or closed within 18 months of the incident.  If they do survive, they could suffer significant financial and reputational losses as well as a loss of confidence in the business and management.

Even if organisations do have a BCP, it might not be fit for purpose as it lacks key information, is out of date, there is no senior management buy-in or there is a lack of BCP knowledge amongst management.  Organisations in this position stand no better chance of recovery than those with no BCP at all.

PwC has a dedicated team of qualified and highly experienced Business Continuity Management (BCM) specialists who have worked with clients across all industry sectors and have a range of BCM services which can help businesses at each stage of the BCM lifecycle including:

• BCP healthcheck and benchmarking – Assessment of your current BCP against key areas as highlighted in good practice standards (BS25999). The output of this review is a detailed and practical action plan on how to bring your plan up to good practice standards.   In addition we can also conduct a BCP benchmarking exercise against organisations of a similar size or in a similar industry to you to help show how your organisation’s BCP arrangements compare to your peers.
• BCP and IT Disaster Recovery plan creation - Our team of specialists have significant experience of BCP and IT Disaster Recovery (ITDR) creation for many organisations ranging from online auction companies to large public companies. We can create all of your plans from scratch or work in conjunction with you through the development process providing ad hoc advice where it is needed. The level of our input is entirely flexible to meet your needs.
• Alignment with industry standards - There are a number of applicable standards such as BS25999 for BCP and PAS77/25777 for ITDR. These standards are complex and difficult to interpret. Our team of experts can help update your current plans to align them to these standards by carrying out a Gap Analysis and creating Roadmaps for alignment. This will give you comfort that your plans are drawn up to a recognised standard.

Contact details
Email: Jonathan Boulton
Tel: +44 (0)113 288 2080