No time and no money for business continuity?
David Teed reflects upon this familiar refrain and draws on his own experiences to show how the positives of having a BC plan outweigh the negatives.
In my experience, about 50% of companies implement BC because someone is telling them to (e.g. auditors, insurers, customers, investors etc.), 30% because management realise that they have an exposure and want to address it and the remaining 20% because they have suffered an incident or near miss and it has scared them into action.
As part of sound corporate governance, managers need to understand the risks faced by their organisation and ensure that appropriate measures are in place to address these – this is particularly relevant for FTSE100 companies who tend to include their approach to business continuity within their annual financial reports.
There is now an expectation from stakeholders (partners, investors, customers, Government agencies, etc.) that well managed companies have BCM in place – there can no longer be any excuses as BCM has proven itself to be effective discipline in helping companies maintain their operations and credibility in the event of an incident.
Increasingly, BCM is included as part of the tender process to win or retain business so there is a real financial impact if a company does not take it seriously – even if they don’t have an incident. UK Government agencies now nearly always include BCM as a requirement for contracts, for example a defence industry client of ours stated recently that business continuity is typically responsible for around 15% of the scoring to win or retain contracts.
- Date: 31st December 2015