Business Continuity Management

BUSINESS CONTINUITY MANAGEMENT
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(20 July 2011)
List of Acronyms
NGO - Non Governmental Organization
BCP - Bridge Control Protocol
EV- Earned Value
CCS - Customer Service and Support
Business Continuity Management
Business continuity management is described as process that helps managers in identification of potential impacts that threatens a company or an organization, the process is thus useful in providing a framework that is useful in building capability as well as resilience to foster an effective response that serve to safeguard interests of the organization key stakeholders, brand, reputation as well as in the activities that play significant role in creation of value. From definition of business continuity management it is evident that the process is inclusive of the following: business recovery, disaster recovery, emergency management, incident management, crisis management, contingency planning, product recall as well as the plain ‘old` organization ‘Plan B` (Lahey, & Moody, 1993).
The methodology of business continuity plan can be applied by any organization regardless of their size and complexity and it is arguably a requirement that every organization must have a business continuity plan manual if it`s to ensure its longetivity. Past disaster statistics have revealed that many organizations do not invest enough resources and time in preparing their business continuity plan. For instance in the 1993 world trade bombing out of the 350 businesses that the affected 150 failed to survive the event where as the firms that had well developed and tested business continuity plan manuals and were affected by September 11 attacks returned to business within days after the disaster.
For smaller organization a business continuity manual might be just a printed manual that is safely stored isolated from the primary work action and it contains details like addresses, names as well as phone numbers for the general staff members, crisis management staff, location of data backup storage media, vendors, insurance contacts copies among other materials that are significant for the survival of the organization. As for the larger organizations a complex business continuity plan is required and it includes other additional materials like means essential in establishment of new approach centre, physical records, new supply chains, technical requirements and readiness, secondary work site, work recovery measures, and the regular repotting requirements. Generally, a business continuity plan should be easy to use during crisis and should be realistic. It often forms part of the organizations over all management and sits alongside disaster recovery planning and the crisis management.
It`s obvious that as Japan suffered from the effects of natural disaster like earthquake and tsunami it`s unfortunate that people cannot control Mother Nature but definitely can control the man made elements of such disaster. Many company`s both in Japan and in other parts of the world`s experienced adverse effects from the disaster especially the risk related to melt down of the nuclear power plants in Fukushima. One of the company that greatly affected by the disaster is General Elect...