Business Continuity Consultants

Business Continuity consultants provide an essential service to the enterprise organizations in the current world climate. So what sort of services should you expect? Read on.

Business Continuity consultants – guidance on Business Continuity Planning

Business Continuity planning requires a thorough review of your organization's entire operation for safety and operational vulnerabilities.  This business impact assessment  should include not only day-to-day operations but also include key suppliers, business, and data partners as well as infrastructure components that are deemed vital. 

Planning must include detailed contingency plans that will guide your organization in performing its critical functions during a disruption or disaster.

Business Continuity consultants – how to start the process

You must start the process by identifying all critical processes and by evaluating threats at every location, identifying all the key components, their interdependencies, and their relative importance.

This planning should include:

• A review of all hazards and threats quantifying the potential for impact.

• Triage to identify processes, systems, functions, and partners that are most critical and at risk.

• Developing contingency and disaster-recovery plans for each process. 

• Identification of mitigation steps.

• A review of the functionality, practicality, and cost-benefit of various contingency and recovery options.

• Crisis communication and notification plans for employees and stakeholders.

• Contingency planning should be an integral part of your overall business continuity management process.

Business Continuity consultants – basics of the contingency plan

While the specific details of your individual contingency plans must be worked out by your users and IT personnel, all contingency plans should address the following areas, at a minimum:

• Objective of the plan (e.g., continue normal operations, continue in a degraded mode, abort the function as quickly as safely possible, etc.)
• Criteria for invoking the plan (e.g., local disaster, experiencing serious system failures, etc.)
• Expected life of the plan (How long can operations continue in contingency operating mode?)
• Roles, responsibilities and authority
• Plan creation and checkout of resource constraints to plan for each contingency and objective
• Training on and testing of plans
• Procedures for operating in contingency mode
• Resource plan for operating in contingency mode (e.g., staffing, scheduling, materials, supplies, facilities, temporary hardware and software, communications, etc.)
• Criteria for returning to normal operating mode
• Procedures for returning to normal operating mode
• Procedures for recovering lost or damaged data