Business Continuity Planning

Feb/12

A business continuity plan is essential to protect your business if a serious incident occurs.  An incident does not have to be a catastrophe.  For example, your business could be threatened even if your ability to supply products was restricted for a period of time.  The cause of the supply interruption may be a fire, a faulty component, or something else.  The result would be that your customers will look elsewhere and that could have a serious impact on your business.  However, planning for that occurrence can reduce the impact and help to ensure that your business continues.  Here is our top 10 items to consider.

  • 1. Using a severity / probability assessment, ensure your business continuity plan has considered all possible crises, and has prioritised planning on the most relevant.
  • 2. Consider the impact of a crisis in the worst case. Often companies will only plan for the initial impact of a crisis, and not consider how things can develop; sometimes for the worse. This is because larger scale disruptions can be difficult to face.
  • 3. Is your business impact analysis comprehensive? This is fundamental to effective business continuity planning
  • 4. Check that your business continuity plan includes a list of key equipment, suppliers of that equipment with costs, delivery lead times and contact details.
  • 5. Do you understand the reporting requirements to the authorities if there is a serious accident or environmental incident at your site and how this can have a longer term business continuity impact?
  • 6. Is your back-up electricity generator stored securely? There have been instances of generators being stolen for their copper wire resulting in major business disruptions.
  • 7. Ensure your crisis management and business continuity plans are tested during 2012. This can be either a desk top exercise or a live exercise involving the emergency services, followed by business impact scenarios.
  • 8. Many accidents and "incidents" happen out of office hours. Do you have a response network to ensure senior management is rapidly involved in any situation considering both the immediate incident management as well as the business continuity?
  • 9. Have you been asked to prepare a business continuity plan by your retail customers or insurers (e.g. product recall or property insurance) and have these plans been completed?
  • 10. Have you contacted RQA to get assistance in your business continuity planning? The development of effective plans can be less expensive and less onerous than you may think.

Contact RQA to see how we can help with any of the above.  Go to www.rqa-europe.com for more details on RQA.