“What will be the impact in your organization’s capability to deliver as expected by your clients, if a negative incident causes the loss of your HQs workarea or your production infrastructure, your warehouse site or your logistics operations?”

“or”

“What will be the impact if the Information Systems of your business collapse for some hours or some days following an unforeseen power blackout or a malicious virus that managed to infect your network?”

Alike questions may get different answers if observed from different perspectives but the most important issue that businesses have to consider is how much they are prepared to go through such conditions! Business Continuity deals with how an organization ensures that products, services and critical business functions will be always available to customers, partners, supervisory bodies, and any other stakeholder that need to have access to those functions. It entails standards, program development, preparation, and supporting policies; specific and detailed procedures and actions are required to ensure a business will continue with no stoppage, irrespective of any adverse conditions or events.

We help our clients build solid and comprehensive Business Continuity Strategies, Plans and Management System to prepare and better address such threats whenever they might occur or comply with the existing standards (as the British Standard 25999-1 and the ISO22301-2012). Our consultants are knowledgeable of the worldwide BC/BCM standards developed by the relevant Institutions (International Organization for Standardization – ISO, British Standards Institution – BSI, American National Standards Institute – ANSI etc.)

Our approach involves a series of actions and initiatives to create a solid Business Continuity Response Capability i.e. Identifying, developing, acquiring, documenting, and testing procedures and resources to ensure continuity of a firm’s key operations in the event of an incident, disaster, emergency or threat within a structured step-by-step approach:

Particular attention is paid to the Human Factor and the Review Process:

• A critical aspect of the development, deployment and successful implementation of a Business Continuity Response Framework lies with the capability of the human resources to understand which business functions and why are the most important to the business. It is therefore imperative to ensure that personnel are adequately trained to take over those business functions when new people are joining or current employees are leaving a firm. In this way, we ensure that the required skills of the human factor will always be available in case of an event of a disaster.
• Another critical element of a Business Continuity Response Framework is the frequency it is reviewed and updated to reflect changes within the organization, the business and the environment. Other factors may dictate more frequent review as for example significant business process, location or technology changes or significant changes in the external business environment (market, product or regulatory change).