Dramatic events in recent years have brought to fore the need for business continuity management.

The millennium bug, or Y2K as it is more popularly known, didn’t materialize into the doomsday event that many feared would bring the world’s information systems to its feet. However , the effort invested in its solutions provided many organizations with the first true opportunity to develop plans for disasters that didn’t relate primarily to the loss of IT or office-based facilities.

The occurrences of 9/11 modified the BCM landscape forever and totally. It redefined “worst case eventuality” in BCM terms. The terrorist attacks on 7 July 2005 on the London underground transport system and similar events that followed in Tokyo, Madrid and Mumbai stressed the critical role business continuity planning played in making certain that organizations survived and recovered from such disastrous events.

The trend toward globalization and outsourcing also modified the character of dependencies inside a business. Enterprises have many more economic interdependency between regions and hinge on longer supply chains for physical production of consumer goods. There's an enlarging dependency on offshore, outsourced operations for service delivery and back office administration. Products “Made in China” fill the shelves of EU stores. Calls for the number of a pizza takeout on Redgrave Drive in Milton Keynes in the UK are handled by agents in the Philippines. There were talks of an iPad deficit in N. Y days after the March 2011 tsunami hit Japan because necessary elements were produced only in an area in that country hit by the catastrophe.

Why BCM?

BCM provides a framework for building organizational resilience and the capability for effective response that protects the interests of key shareholders, reputation, brand, and value-creating activities. The 2 key words here are “resilience” and “response”. Resiliency is still very much a concept chaotic that is continually being redefined it basically refers to an organization’s capacity to soak up, respond and rebound from disruptions. Response, on the other hand is well defined and documented with one or two methodologies firmly in place for developing, testing and implementing paths should understood threats actually occur.

Why BS 25999?

The Brit standard for business continuity is designed to keep your business going during the hardest and astonishing circumstances. By helping establish the essentials of a BCM system prepared it protects your staff, preserves your reputation, and supplies the capability for you to do business as normal. BS 25999 was developed by a grouping of world class experts representing a cross-section of industry sectors and the govt to establish the process, principles and terminology of Business Continuity Management.

It gives a foundation for understanding, developing and implementing business continuity within your organisation and gives you confidence in business-to-business and business-to-customer dealings. It also contains a comprehensive set of controls based mostly on BCM best practice and covers the whole BCM lifecycle.

Enterprise Scorecard provides solutions for implementing a business continuity management system and complying with BS25999