How A Business Continuity Plan Can Forestall Disaster

By Author: Joaquin Quinton
Total Articles: 2
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Over the past few years, many business people have become increasingly attracted to the idea of business continuity. Ideally because the idea has lots of risk management elements and this is what every business needs.

Over the past few years, many business people have become increasingly attracted to the idea of business continuity. Ideally because the idea has lots of risk management elements and this is what every business needs. It is also worth noting that many regularly agencies are nowadays demanding that business come with their business continuity plan before they certify or approve them. Many people thing that business continuity is the same as disaster recovery but the two are different although they are closely related. Disaster management mostly deals with matters that aim at restoring computer functionality after a disaster while business continuity goes further than that.

Business continuity puts into consideration all aspects of the business instead of the technological aspects as in the case with disaster recovery plan. Business continuity goes even further to examine how key employee will have ...
... to travel to work even after transport disruption has occurred. The BCM training goes as far as communicating news to other employees at home is concerned. Although these processes may involve the use of a computer, but they might just involve procedures, documents, people or other documents. Generally, business continuity training includes profit-making functions including handover of deliverables and sales of stock. However it excludes international functions such as interviewing job candidates or filing of tax returns.

It is important to not that business continuity does not only major on disasters such as terrorist activities, fire or epidemics, but interruptions that are a bit lesser such as illness of key staff members, computer virus, power cut and so on. Although these interruptions seem to be easy to recover from, they can have great impact on the business more so if it affects sales functions for an extended period of time. Most importantly, business continuity is by far much more that just reacting to epidemic events, but it is also prompt for future planning to avoid business disasters.

Business continuity is like important projects in life because it help to take careful and thorough planning to finally come up with an appropriate scope that can comfortably that provides the needed contingencies to keeping a business viable all the time but at the same time does not waste lots of money on non-critical functions.

For a business continuity plan, the most important part of scoping out is to perform a business impact analysis. Business impact analysis is a key tool that can objectively evaluate potential consequences of losing a business function. The result of business continuity plan is that it enables the company or business to make informed decision on the kind of functions and operations that require resources in order to provide contingencies whenever there is an event of a disaster. It also helps to determine the extent at which resources and planning is needed.

It is evident that BC has a wider limit than disaster recovery. Therefore, business management continuity needs to have clear planning and sufficient resources because the two factors are crucial in achieving cost effective outcome in any business venture.
Resource: http://www.continuitysa.com/