Business Continuity Planning Strategy

Business Continuity Planning Strategy relates to the preparation work that is carried out to protect a business from the effect of a major failure or change. Most continuity planning relates to failure of the IT systems but, whereas these are improtant, they are not the only problems that can destroy a company.

The concept of continuity planning is relatively straightforward:-

1. Carry out a risk assessment
2. Analyse the impact any of these risks would have on the business if they occur
3. Specify the time to initiate a response to the problem and the time to complete the response
4. Determine the resources required to enable the response
5. Produce the Business Continuity Planning Strategy

It looks fairly simple but, as with all planning, problems occur at the very early stages in defining the risks to be analysed. To be effective all parts of the business needs to be involved in identifying the significant risks. In general the greater the input the more likely most potential problems will be identified.

The risk analysis should be an on-going process with newly identified risks being added and previously identified risks being re-analysed to take into account changes in technology, markets and competitors activities.