Business Continuity Advice

What is Business Continuity Planning?

Business continuity planning ( BCP ) is a management process that helps manage the risks to the smooth running of an organisation or the delivery of a service, thereby ensuring that it can continue to operate in the event of a disruption.

Why it matters

• 80% of businesses affected by a major incident close within 18 months
• 90% of businesses that lose data from a disaster are forced to close within 2 years
• 58% of UK organisations were disrupted by the 11 September 2001 disaster in New York.  1 in 8 was seriously affected,

The March 2004 fire in a BT tunnel in Manchester, affected communication links in many businesses throughout Cheshire, causing widespread disruption to business.  It does not have to be a large-scale incident to cause your business to collapse beyond recovery.

Building-in business continuity and making it part of the way you run your business helps prepare you to offer 'business as usual' in the quickest possible time, rather than having to 'fire fight' any emergency. Therefore it is just as important that small companies, as well as large corporations, ensure that in the event of a business continuity incident, critical services are maintained and employees understand what is expected of them. This is to ensure that the business survives the disruption.

Without effective business continuity planning, a natural or man-made disaster e.g. fire, flood, adverse publicity, loss of personnel or premises, I.T. failure. theft, bomb threat, power failure, all could lead to one or more of the following:-

• Complete failure of business
• Loss of income
• Loss of reputation
• Legal penalties
• Impact on insurance payments.
  

What is a business continuity incident?

An incident is an event that disrupts your work, ranging from flu epidemic to fire.

A major incident may last a long time and affect buildings and people as well as equipment, communications, and services.

December  2005 - Buncefield Fire, 4,000 jobs threatened

A minor incident may only affect single services such as electrical supply, IT equipment or telephones. 

March 2004 - BT Tunnel Fire, 130,000 telephone lines lost