Considering your capabilities?
How prepared are you to deal with a crisis? How well will your team cope when business-as-usual becomes business in chaos?
There is a rapid decrease in the tolerance for operational downtime so every organisation has an obligation to ensure that it is adequately prepared to deal with unexpected events. Those organisations that discharge this obligation run an unacceptable risk.
Even though you may have some security and safety measures in place, crisis incidents may still occur. Your day-to-day business operations require a robust ‘safety net’ that includes good crisis management and business continuity capabilities. Having a capability in place will ensure you respond appropriately to serious incidents within a relatively short period of time.
What is Business Continuity Management?
Business Continuity Management (“BCM”) is an organisation’s effort to limit the effects of a crisis by providing uninterrupted operations and services during this period. BCM takes a wider view of ’Disaster Recovery’, incorporating IT Disaster Recovery Planning along with other areas of organisational recovery. These areas of organisational recovery include at least the following:
- Risk Management;
- Crisis Management;
- Emergency Management;
- Business Recovery; and
- IT DR Recovery.
BCM is an ongoing process requiring an organisation to continually reassess their business continuity capabilities in order to be adequately prepared to deal with any crisis. In particular, BCM deals with how, where, when, and who will be responsible and what they will do when an abnormal situation occurs, in order to ensure that the business can continue with little disruption and reputational damage.
Our solution
PricewaterhouseCoopers has developed an innovative approach to assist clients in defining, implementing and testing their business continuity capabilities. Our approach applies hands-on crisis simulation, rehearsal and testing techniques to rigorously test all aspects of a client’s business continuity capability. We put your recovery teams through their paces by actively simulating a worst-case disaster. Simulations and rehearsals provide a realistic experience while carefully controlling the exercise in a safe environment.
Testing is the only mechanism that an organisation has in order to reach a level of comfort that your recovery strategies and supporting infrastructures are sufficient to cope with a real life crisis. Without adequate testing at the appropriate layer, staff and management may not be rehearsed in their roles and responsibilities and their recovery strategies may not work appropriately.
Our consulting services
- Establishing governance policies and frameworks
- Conducting business impact assessments
- Establishing an organisation’s recovery strategy
- Establishing appropriate emergency responses
- Establishing business continuity strategies
- Establishing business recovery strategies
- Establishing IT disaster recovery strategies
- Establishing BCM frameworks and guidelines
- Project managing BCM implementations
- Establishing BCM programme offices
- Drafting crisis and business continuity plans
- Facilitating awareness and training programmes
- Establishing crisis communication structures
- Facilitating co-ordination with external parties
- Facilitating crisis management simulations
- Facilitating business recovery walkthroughs
- Facilitating business recovery rehearsals
- Facilitating IT disaster recovery tests
- Establishing monitoring and reporting frameworks
- Providing ongoing business continuity advise
Our independent review services
- Evaluation of business continuity readiness
- Evaluation of IT disaster recovery readiness
- Evaluation of IT backup and recovery solutions
- Evaluation of business recovery rehearsals
- Evaluation of IT disaster recovery tests
