82% of managers reduced the impact of disruptions by having effective business continuity plans*
BSI has a range of business continuity management (BCM) standards, books, self-assessment tools, conferences and training which can help your business to reduce the chance and impact of in the event that you experience a disruption.
Why is effective business continuity management essential?
In an increasingly competitive market organizations need to go to greater lengths to survive; where are they if they can’t continue producing their products and services?
‘It won’t happen to me’
Extreme cold weather, cyber attacks, floods; unfortunately the chance of our normal business being disrupted is more common that we think, in fact…
- 1 in 5 businesses experience a major disruption every year
- 93% of UK organizations were affected by the snow spell alone in 2010 (costing the economy £280 million a day)
What can you do to minimise the impact of a disruption?
From 10 minutes to 10 days out of action, the costs of returning to normal operations after being disrupted far outweighs having an effective plan B.
This could, for example, be maintaining a level of reserve stock in the case of a supplier not being unable to reach you. Or, ensuring all key company information is backed up at another site in the case that this is destroyed.
From a flood to an outages; companies benefiting from business continuity planning is increasing
In fact;
• 84% of UK managers benefited from activating their business continuity plans during a disruption (an increase of 14% from 2009)
• 82% were able to lessen the impact of the disruption as they had a BCM plan
• 77% recovered faster
So, how can we ensure our business continuity arrangements are going to minimise the cost of disruption and increase the speed of recovery?
The answer: Effective business continuity management (BCM)
This can be ensured by using a business continuity management system which encourages a proactive and systematic approach to business continuity management to make sure you are best prepared.
How do I put a Business Continuity Management system (BCMS) into place in my company?
British Standard BS 25999, written by the UK team of Business Continuity experts, the BCM/1 committee, sets out the fundamentals of a Business continuity management system.
The management system element follows the same approach as found in other british and international standards and uses the ‘plan, do, check, act,’ methodology to drive continuous improvement throughout your organisation.
Following the plan, do, check, act model means you learn from past incidents and continually improve your BCM; something that UK managers did not do, meaning they weren’t better able to cope with the second snow spell in 2010.
Therefore, BS 25999, the most popular way for organizations to judge the effectiveness of their BCMS gives you the assurance you have the controls in place to minimise the impact and costs of any disruption.
What exactly is BS 25999?
BS 25999 is made up of two parts
• Part 1, the Code of Practice, provides BCM best practice recommendations to help you put the requirements for BCMS in to place in your organization.
• Part 2, the Specification, gives you the requirements for a Business Continuity Management System (BCMS).
This tried and tested approach ensures continual improvement and enables you to proactively improve your organisation’s resilience
Are you interested in implementing or conducting a gap analysis of your BCMS or want help putting it in to place?
Use our Business Continuity Self-assessment: BS 25999 tool which will
• Guide the design of your business continuity management system (BCMS) by going through each requirement of the BS 25999 with expert guidance and hyperlinks to further help and tips
• Quickly and easily identify elements of your BCM that are working well, needing attention or missing altogether
• Benchmark and compare different parts of your organization, your improvement overtime and your alignment to the BS 25999
Learn more about the Business Continuity Self-assessment: BS 25999
You may also be interested in:
Corporate social responsibility and governance
Integrated management systems (IMS)
Project management
Knowledge management
Quality management
Risk management
Supply chain management & risk
See a short video demonstrating why you need BCM processes in place:
*Survey conducted by the Business Continuity Institute (BCI), March 2010