Business Continuity Planning is all about being prepared.  Will mission critical services and systems be operational during an extended period of downtime? Let Amgentech help you mitigate the dangers of extended downtime by preparing and implementing solutions to keep your business running.

Prepare a business impact analysis to find time-sensitive or critical business processes and functions and their dependent resources. The analysis needs to identify operational and financial impacts from the disruption of the business.

Among the impacts to consider are:

1. Customer dissatisfaction or defection
2. Lost sales and income
3. Delayed sales or income Increased expenses
    (e.g., overtime labor, outsourcing, expediting costs, etc.)
4. Regulatory fines Contractual penalties or loss of contractual bonuses
5. Delay of new business plans

Identify and document all systems, whether mission critical or not.  This step is important to ensure continuity of services to your employees and customers alike.  All resources, not just internal resources need to be accounted for. IT includes many devices, such as servers, desktops, laptops, and networks and mobile/wireless devices.  The ability to run both office productivity and enterprise software is essential. Any recovery strategy needs to ensure the restoration of these services to ensure all internal and external client expectations.  

Once the business has identified and documented, a plan needs to be documented to clearly defined priorities and the methods by which the identified process are to be duplicated manually or the process dependent systems restored.

Business Continuity Planning is all about the plan. The business needs to formulate a plan framework in which the recovery team and stakeholders need to be involved. Stakeholders need to ensure that their respective department critical systems are included. The plan should be documented thoroughly with procedures to ensure the continuity of the business and with disaster recovery procedures for all critical components of the business. The manual must be assembled with participation of all key personnel and management must approve the final continuity plan.

Planning without testing is a recipe for disaster. On a regular cycle, the business continuity plan needs to be reviewed and revised, if required. The plan needs to be followed by the stake holders to ensure relevancy. Business requirements change over time, the continuity plan needs to be a living document, that changes with the requirements of the business. Testing is a key component of an effective business continuity plan. During testing, employee participation is key to impart critical knowledge that will be required for the successful implementation of a disaster recovery. The evaluation of policies, plans, procedures, and employees will reveal key weaknesses and resource gaps. These employee evaluations work to provide business with a baseline for future employee remediation and training.