Business Continuity Management (BCM) is a process that identifies potential risks that threaten the smooth running of an organisation and provides the framework for building resilience to ensure it can continue to operate effectively in a way that safeguards the interests of its key stakeholders by protecting its reputation, brand and value creating activities.

Without BCM a disaster, either natural or man-made could result in:

• Loss of work to competitors
• Failures within the supply chain
• Loss of reputation
• Human Resources issues
• Health and Safety liabilities
• Financial loss
• Higher insurance premiums

The key steps in developing BCM are to:

• Analyse your business – How does the organisation interact both internally and externally? What services, staff and facilities are essential?

           This must be an objective exercise.

• Assess the risks – How likely is it to happen? What effect will it have on the organisation? Ask yourself ‘what if……..?’ questions.

           By planning for the worst case scenario it will be easier to deal with low impact incidents.

• Develop your strategy – Accept the risks or attempt to reduce them by making arrangements to cope with an emergency.

           The strategy depends on management’s ‘appetite for risk’

• Develop your plan – Plans should involve all parts of the organisation and external partners. They should be clear and easy to understand.

           The plan is a ‘living document’ that needs to constantly evolve to reflect changes.

• Rehearse your plan – This can be paper based, telephone cascading or full scale rehearsal.

           Plans will be updated with lessons learned from these exercises.