Properly Developing Business Continuity

As Harvey MacKay says, “If you fail to plan, then you plan to fail.” Nowhere is this truer than in the area of Business Continuity Management (BCM). That isn’t opinion, according to AXA, a global insurance provider, 80% of small- and medium-sized enterprises affected by a major incident either never re-open, or re-open only to close their doors for good within 18 months. The common reason is not having a solid BCM plan. In this whitepaper, “Preparing for the Worst” Sungard details how to get mission critical systems ready for the possibility of a serious incident.

Today’s headlines are unsettling with natural disaster stories from floods to earthquakes and even if this seems unlikely to your business, there is a real possibility of something like a fire. The key to avoiding being in the aforementioned 80% is to have a strategy that protects the critical systems of your enterprise. This paper presents such a plan and how to implement it.

Developing that plan should be part of the overall business operation and considered as strategic as many of the day to day operations. The roadmap laid out in this paper has four distinct steps - assessment, vendor viability, detailing the precision of the plan, and managing emergency communications. The wise development of these steps protects everything in your operation. In a disaster situation it can mean the difference between a total loss, and rising above the circumstance.