BCM

iFACTS on - Business Continuity Management

Business Continuity Management (BCM) is driven forward by regulation, risk management and protocols such as the BS25999.

Stakeholders, including board members, shareholders, staff and customers, demand organizational resilience. The BCM system uses a systematic approach to demonstrate this necessary resilience.

By definition BCM is a response to a risk that needs mitigation. If the risk should occur the effects will depend on how well the organization manages the situation. This means that BCM is directly integrated in risk management, as well as incident and crisis management.

There are several examples that illustrate the importance of BCM and how situations are handled, for example:

• An incident at an external supplier stops production (Nokia & Ericsson, Philips manufacturing in Albuquerque)
• A conflict between nations closes the market (Muhammad cartoons in Jyllands-Posten affect Arla dairy products)
• A failed implementation of a business system (unfortunately too many examples)

Two sides of BCM

Working with BCM before something happens. This involves active risk management, identifying relevant risk scenarios, planning for activities to reduce the effect and having a crisis organization in place.Handling a situation as it happens, such as executing continuity plans and activating the crisis organization.

Integrating a BCM system in day-to-day business activities takes time and effort. All critical organizational parts and activities need to be involved and mapped in relation to how they support the business.

In the iFACTS method BCM is fully integrated.

Organizational assets (Project, IT, Facility, Competences, etc.) are documented and managed with tools such as continuity plans and risk assessments. A performance score is calculated based on how well the asset is managed in terms of objective or requirement fulfillment, risk or non-conformities.

One important part is that each asset connects to other assets, for example, the finance process connects to the financial system, which connects to IT services, which connect to the IT infrastructure and so on. This dependency map is instantly available, identifying the scope and the critical lines, and demonstrates the resiliency of the organizational value chain.

This is the very core of the iFACTS method. All assets are managed in the same systematic way with one cohesive information model — providing the platform for BCM in a keystroke.