Business continuity management: Do you have a plan?

Many business continuity or disaster recovery plans are in place that have taken hours of people's time and input to produce, but the plan is just a paper document if it has not been tested; and, furthermore, it just represents a theoretical recovery capability unless the solution is implemented and the people involved understand their roles and responsibilities in executing the plan and have tested it.

ContinuitySA, a specialist in Business Continuity Management (BCM), provides a number of business continuity-related courses tailored to different audiences (executive, management and operational staff) and their specific BCM needs.

"A business continuity plan is only as good as the people that use it," said Tracey Linnell, GM: advisory services of ContinuitySA. "At the very least, every employee within any given company should be aware of what the plan is and how it will affect them in the event of an interruption, be it as dramatic as a natural disaster, or as banal as load shedding."

ContinuitySA's most popular course: the fiver-day Complete Continuity Practitioner Programme (CCPP) is targeted at those select staff members (typically a BCM manager) who are directly responsible for the implementation, management, maintenance and execution of the BCM programme. "The focus of this course is to ensure that the delegates are able to understand the theory behind a BCM programme implementation and, even more importantly, practical examples form the foundation of the course to ensure the delegate is able to apply the knowledge once he returns to his organisation," noted Linnell.

Practical examples of how companies have responded in varying crises provides delegates with valuable insights on what works - and what doesn't - which Linnell says is a significant benefit of the training.

The programme

The programme consists of an introduction to BCM, including a view of its origins, a review of trends and observations, while providing context of applicable standards and compliance requirements. All elements of the BCI's BCM lifecycle are covered in sufficient detail to empower the delegate to implement a BCM programme confidently within his own organisation.

Additional BCM training solutions are available, said Linnell, including a one-hour BCM session aimed at senior executives, a two-day ICT Continuity course for IT managers and CIOs, as well as customised training based on organisational requirements.

For more, go to www.continuitysa.co.za