Business continuity management (BCM) is a holistic management process for planning and preparing preventative measures to maintain critical business processes in the case of disruptive internal or external events. Business continuity management, therefore, strives to continue or reinstate business activities while minimizing any financial, legal and/or reputational damages. The BIC Business Continuity solution was developed in line with internationally recognized industry standards, such as ISO/IEC 22301:2019 and BSI Standard 100-4. So you can identify relevant threats and develop critical business processes with contingency management. Create business continuity strategies that ensure ongoing operations, develop contingency plans, and enable ongoing optimization. BIC Business Continuity follows these basic steps:
Identifying critical business processes
A business impact analysis is performed to identify all critical business processes that must be maintained in the case of disruption. All critical information about each individual process, as well as its respective process chains and dependencies to resources, must be documented. A damage analysis is then conducted to determine at which point the failure of a business process will have reached the company’s tolerance limit. The information in the business impact analysis is used to derive the maximum tolerated downtime for this process and, subsequently, provide further recovery parameters such as the maximum tolerated data loss and recovery time.
Developing strategies to ensure business continuity
The insights gained from the business impact analysis and risk analysis lay the foundation for continuity strategies. Each risk that has been identified and accessed must now be accepted, transferred, avoided or reduced – decisions, which shape the continuity strategy for protecting critical business processes.
Creating contingency plans
The previous steps merge into drafts for concrete contingency plans for possible crises or disruptions. Detailed steps, procedures and responsibilities are clearly documented and made available to employees.
Improving BCM as an ongoing process
Sensibility and awareness exercises that help prepare employees for emergencies or times of crisis are important instruments in business continuity and can be categorized as contingency measures in the BCM. Contingency exercises also provide an opportunity for detecting potential non-conformities, which are then documented in the risk2value BCM solution as findings and addressed accordingly. Interested parties can view the BCM objectives and guidelines, safeguarded from revisions, directly in the system. The efficacy of the implemented measures and plans are monitored, managed, updated and optimized in an ongoing cycle.
