Business Continuity was something we had often considered but the process was quite daunting, in particular where to begin and the amount of Management Team time we would need to invest in the project.
Increasingly it was featured in supply chain conversations so we decided to embark on the process and were put in touch with BCarm through our Insurance Broker; BCarm also works with our Insurer and supplies us with an online Business Continuity Management System.
To help us understand what Business Continuity meant to the business we undertook a Scoping Meeting with BCarm in which we reviewed the business processes, the business timelines, key functions, and the assets and resources that support these and their recovery times and most critically how long we could be “down” for before the business was irreparably damaged, our Tolerance for Disruption. This gave us an action plan to develop Business Continuity.
Management Time was still our biggest challenge so we engaged BCarm to facilitate the process for us.
Establishing the business' Tolerance for Disruption was key to the whole process and working with BCarm, we were able to agree on our Business Continuity Objectives and establish an appropriate Business Continuity Strategy; In our case due to the recovery time of our Engineering Workshop, was the establishment of offsite storage of finished product.
BCarm then worked with us to develop our Incident Response Plan which included running a disaster scenario to help us develop our appreciation for what our Incident Response would need to address.
We subsequently put in place a Crisis Command Centre and Grab Bags for the Senior Team so we have all the resources we need to manage an incident. We also reviewed the Recovery Times of Assets and put in place suitable recovery measures.
BCarm also engaged our Supply Chain to understand what Business Continuity arrangements they had in place and where necessary we identified suitable alternative suppliers.
The end result is we now have a Business Continuity Management system that is maintaining our business continuity measures on an ongoing basis.
We now feel comfortable that should the worse happen we have put in place suitable arrangements that will enable us to recover our business operations within an acceptable timeframe.
