Business Contingency Planning Is… (BCP)

Business Contingency Planning continually confronts the unlikelihood of a disaster. An interruption could be something related to a winter storm, the loss of electricity to the general area, or the complete and inaccessibility of a facility for an extended period of time. The cause of the interruption doesn’t matter, but I assert being capable of gaining management control of the interruption does.

Depending on the length or severity of the interruption, significant consequences or the very survivability of the corporation may depend on management’s ability to reestablish critical business functions. Usually these business functions have required years to create and establish, but management must reestablish these functions sometimes within hours or days. This is a difficult problem and reestablishing the complex business environment in a timely manner requires a well thought out plan in place ready to be executed.

BCP is an answer to the unexpected business interruption. It is a proactive executive commanded crisis management program driven by business requirements.

The plan creates a crisis management team empowered to control any interruptions of the business. Properly constructed, this crisis management team has the capability of responding appropriately to any interruption; from the interruption of telephone service to and including a worst case scenario involving complete inaccessibility of facilities.

As a proactive management controlled program, BCP modifies the consequences of a business interruption to a level acceptable to management and provides a tested vehicle when executed will permit an effective resumption of interrupted business functions.

Each business function is analyzed to define the consequences of an outage of service in quantifiable financial terms, operational impacts, and legal or regulatory restrictions. These consequences are then assessed by management who defines the point at which the consequences are unacceptable. That point becomes the recovery time frame. Each business function may have a separate recovery time frame.

BCP then identifies recovery alternatives that cost effectively restores critical business functions within an acceptable time frame. Management authorizes and approves the recovery solutions. A recovery plan is developed around the recovery solution authorized by management. The recovery plan is exercised to train the recovery organization, to define changes necessary in the plan to strengthen it, and to provide a tested vehicle which when executed will permit an effective resumption of interrupted business functions or computer operations.

BCP objectives are to: Ensure continuity and survival of the business, provide protection of corporate assets, provide management control of risks and exposures, provide preventative measures where appropriate, and to take proactive management control of any business interruption.

BCP provides a balance between acceptable potential losses and acceptable onetime and annual costs. Business Contingency Planning is a business function which when properly employed places revenue loss and cash flow exposures under management control during any business interruption. Business Contingency Planning can also assist management in providing customer confidence and service satisfaction, as crisis management control can assist the corporation in maintaining market share, and can provide the basis to promote industry image.

Business Contingency Planning implementation and ongoing maintenance mythology will provide answers to the questions of:
•How do I reestablish my business function(s)?
•What is a disaster?
•When do the impacts begin?
•How much loss can be tolerated?
•What are the options?
•What will a recovery plan cost?
•How much is enough?
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Business Continuity planning is an essential part of running any modern organization that takes its business and its clients seriously. With so many potential business disasters looming that can befall an organization at any time, it seems unwise not to take actions to prepare for and try to prevent the devastating impact of such catastrophes.

There is a multiplicity of benefits in planning for Business Continuity within your organization. Not only will your data, hardware, software, etc., be better protected, but the people that compose your organization will be better safeguarded should a disaster occur. In addition, employees will be informed and rehearsed as to what actions to take to immediately start the recovery process and ensure business continuity if disaster strikes.
Business continuity (BC) can be defined as a business’ ability to maintain or restore its business and services when some circumstance disrupts normal operations. BC involves disaster recovery, the many activities that are necessary to restore operational status after a disaster.

BC planning is an institution-wide responsibility and needs a champion at the executive level in order to make progress. A collaborative effort is needed to do a robust risk assessment, to prioritize what business processes need to be restored in what order, and to plan and practice the steps needed to restore operations back to a working level after an event.

This integrated approach involves every department understanding and preparing for the role it will play in keeping the entire business functional in a crisis and operational long-term. BC involves more than just traditional administrative information systems recovery; it also means planning for contingencies for teaching and research in the event those systems on which these services depend are inoperable. Recent incidents such as Katrina have brought BC planning into sharp focus for higher education institutions.