Plan today to trade tomorrow
| Published: 3rd July 2008 18:35 |
Plan today to trade tomorrow -
The importance of Business Continuity Management (BCM)
A report by Colin Holmes, Site Editor, on a presentation given by Tony Cox, the Business Continuity Planning Co-ordinator for Barking & Dagenham.
Tony Cox explained that, since 2004, local authorities had a duty to offer guidance and support to businesses to help them plan for unexpected incidents that would affect their ability to function.
He stressed the importance of planning for such incidents by quoting statistics on the number of companies that went out of businesses following such incidents - very few companies survive. Not only that, but businesses now need to show that they have workable continuity plans to bid successfully for local authority contracts.
To produce a good Business Continuity Plan it is important that you know your business. This will involve everyone in your company, and - by including everyone - will ensure that each person takes ownership of the plan.
Once you have analysed your business you next have to assess the risks to it. That is, how likely is it that any particular threat will occur, and - if it does - how will it affect you. To make sure you cover every possible scenario you have to ask yourself "What it?": for example; no electricity, staff caught in a traffic incident, telephones down, loss of data or computer networks, etc.
You then have to develop your plan. This involves having a strategy for dealing with each conceivable threat. For example, a business located south of the A13 could not build flood barriers - but they might consider moving.
Finally the Business Continuity Plan needs to be kept up-to-date. For example; the Out-of-hours contact numbers for key staff need to be rung at regular intervals. Then action needs to be taken to correct those which have changed, and also to considered if enough key staff were able - should the need arise - to respond to an emergency.
In other words, "Plan today to trade tomorrow".
The above account is of a presentation given by Tony Cox, the Business Continuity Planning Co-ordinator for the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham. It was presented at the Civic Centre on the 25th June 2008, as part of the B&D Chamber of Commerce's Summer Workshop Series 2008.
A copy of the presentation can be downloaded here
For more information contact Tony Cox:
Tel: 020 8227 3408
or, log on to: http://www.londonprepared.gov.uk/businesscontinuity/
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