When planning for business continuity,
remember Noah started building the ark before it began to rain.

During a crisis the world changes into chaos. The familiar surroundings we think we know changes into a strange and possibly hostile one in an instant. It is ‘every man for himself’. The model of everyday practice, the business as usual, does not function anymore. Routines, customs and procedures do simply not exist anymore. When, because of this, communication lines change, hierarchy, out of dire necessity, gives way to knowledge and insight and cooperation is becoming essential.

Business Continuity Management (BCM) is aimed at safeguarding the continuity of the business process and the organisation’s continued survival. It offers a System of Measures to enable an organisation to continue its essential business processes under all circumstances and protect its capital, among which the reputation.

The Business Continuity Management Product consists of workable and applicable measures, which are effective preventively as well as repressively. In the preventive sense, measures are aimed at avoiding the occurrence of situations that result in a possible damage of the continuity within an organisation. And in the event that a crisis has become manifest, repressive measures limit the damaging consequences to an acceptable level.

BCM involves the entire organisation. After all, an organisation’s achievement is the sum of all business processes together. Therefore, the whole of activities of the BCM process covers all business processes and the activities aimed at safeguarding the continuity have an organisationwide character. Maybe a large number of, fragmented, BCM oriented activities are already present within the organisation. Their value, however, is a relative one. As long as activities are fragmented and not integrated by lack of coordination, tuning and business alignment, the primary and intended purpose of these activities is passed over, and the intended effect is undone completely.

BCM is essential to each and every organisation. There is not a single organisation without a weak spot and, thus, every organisation is vulnerable to threats. If an organisation’s weakness is hit, there is always a crisiis. But, a crisis can also manifest itself less explicitly. Whenever ‘smoke’ is observed, the media can make it into ‘fire’; even if the smoke has already risen. If the weak spot is hit, the controllable, safe and predictable world gives way to powerlessness and fear. This goes beyond the processing capacity of (the management in) the business as usual. But the scope of BCM reaches further than the survival of a calamity. The effort to examine an organisation in detail, produces advantages from an unexpected quarter.

Thus, preventive measures taken by an organisation after the execution of a risk inventory, usually provide maximum efficiency against minimum investment. It is about small adjustments giving astounding results. Moreover, BCM can contribute to the enhancement of critical business activities and processes by allowing insight into pressure points therin. Whenever an activity is examined how it can be continued after a calamity, its inconsistency in the daily routine may become that evident that it becomes impracticable. Process improvement is thus a preconditioned and critical factor of success to enable the continuity of the process.