Business Continuity
Preparing for unexpected interruptions
How we can help you
We cannot predict what will happen today. let alone what will happen tomorrow. But without predicting the actual cause, you can plan and prepare for the outcome: unavailability of resources, such as office, systems, people, or vendors.
With a good plan, an outage or interruptions remains merely an incident, and will not grow to become a crisis or disaster.
Our senior consultants are not only certified, but also have decades of professional practical experience, working in a variety of organisations to prepare plans that make sense. We believe that a good plan of just a few pages works much better than a bulky 150 page plan that nobody reads.
Planning for the Un-Expected
Because the likelihood of something very unlikely happening, is very likely.
It is impossible to predict tomorrow’s crisis. No-one expected Fukushima, where an earth quake was followed by a tsunami, which hit a nuclear power station. Or exceptional typhoons such as Hato or Mangkhut. Or 9/11. Or a common sprinkler installation causing a flood. Or SARS/COVID. Or the umbrella movement occupation of HK Central. Or your lifts breaking down. Or a global pandemic. Yet, such things happen. BCM is not about predicting the next crisis, but about being prepared for the consequences.
We can help you with that: Simple, generic plans for an outage of your production means.
Building
Fire, earthquake, legionnaires disease, power outage, lonely shooter, invacuation, elevator breakdown, riots, terrorism, typhoon damage, anthrax scare, airco failure, etc
People
Pandemics, strike, staff poaching, infectious disease, insider criminality, family care, nuclear scare, rogue staff, tsunami, etc
IT Technology
Computer crash, cyber attacks, datacenter failure, router issues, network failure, server crash, easter eggs, rogue it staff, etc
Vendors
Market data suppliers, logistics services, IT software or hardware suppliers, outsourced partners, archive services, white label services, call centers, etc.
Our approach is based on ISO22301 and inspired by the BCM Good Practices Guidelines (GPG Ed.7.0), from the Business Continuity Institute (BCI).
Business Continuity is defined as the capability of an organization to continue the delivery of products and services within acceptable time frames at a predefined capacity during a disruption.
This BCM process guides organizations in identifying threats, designing responses, implementing a plan and measuring effectiveness. It’s an ongoing lifecycle to continually build and improve organizational resilience.
What we really like to give our clients:
- Short, concise documents with useful information;
- Solutions that make business sense for YOUR organisation;
- Peace-of-mind, knowing you are ready for the unexpected;
- Peace-of-mind, knowing what you know, and knowing what you don’t know.
The BCI Good Practice Guidelines
Business Continuity Management System (BCMS)
01
Establish a BCMS
This first step of the BC Management System is to establish your organization’s Policy and Programme. Aligned with, and scaled to your organization, we help you define governance, ownership and how BC should be implemented, through an ongoing cycle of activities.
02
Embracing BC
In too many organizations, BC plans were drafted by external consultants and end up in a drawer to be forgotten. Through focused training and awareness activities, we can help your organization embrace a culture with emphatic understanding of BC as essential to the organization.
03
Analysis
Analysis is the stage of the BCM system where we review and assess your organization to identify its objectives, how it functions, and the constraints of its operating environment. The main technique used to analyze the organization is the Business Impact Analysis (BIA). A Risk and Threat Assessment is also undertaken at this stage.
04
Solution Design
In this Design stage we help you identify and select solutions to ensure adequate continuity can be achieved during disruption. Together with your management, we generate and evaluate practical, creative ideas on how services may be provided during disruptions.
05
Enabling Solutions
Once the appropriate solutions have been agreed, these need to be practically implemented. This may require building or establishing practical workarounds, but also writing Business Continuity Plans (BCP) with practical details how such solution can be activated or used.
This is also the stage where Crisis Management and Incident Response is defined, with special attention to corporate crisis communication covering all internal and external stakeholders.
06
Validation
To confirm that the BCMS meets the objectives of the policy and that the plans in place are effective, we’ll help you develop a practical test, exercise, maintenance and audit program, preferably with a multi year increasingly challenging horizon. The goal is continual improvement and a growing level of organizational resilience.
When disaster strikes
In your office
You’ll be ready for it
We can advise on Business Continuity solutions to be implemented, and how to do this in the most cost-effective way. We also know most of the service vendors, and which of their products would be beneficial to you.
For example: Work Area Recovery (WAR) is the name of temporary workspace that can be used whenever the normal office is inaccessible or destroyed. For industries where interruptions have high impact, and the technical lead-time of setting up desktop equipment is long (such as in financial markets), it makes sense to prepare a WAR site that is dedicated, fully configured and immediately available. In other cases, non-dedicated “cold” sites or even a shared site may suffice, where it is okay to take a few hours to set up.
As low-cost alternative, companies often rely on Work From Home (WFH) solutions. However, imagine working from home for a prolonged period of time, with your youngest seeking attention, your dog wanting to play, your loved one needing help with errants, and many other domestic distractions. Especially in Hong Kong, where domestic housing is notoriously cramped, WFH should be carefully considered.
Our specialists can advise on all different solutions.