Business Continuity

• Our Capability
• Scoping
• Business Impact Assessment
• Risk Assessment
• BCM Strategy
• Crisis Management Plans
• Ongoing Maintenance

An important element of any well formed operational risk management strategy is a Business Continuity Management (BCM) plan, which ensures that organisations can continue to operate to agreed, minimum acceptable levels based on the requirements identified by the business. A BCM plan will help you answer some basic questions about the operation of your organisation:

1. What would be the effect of a power outage that caused our systems to be down for a day?
2. Are we risking financial penalties from clients who expect us to be operating at all times?
3. Who are our key staff, and who else knows what they do?
4. What would happen to our business if we did not have access to our building?
5. What would happen if we did not have access to a key business application?

Acenseo's pragmatic approach to the development of Business Continuity plans is based on best practice, and is consistent with the BSI PAS56 Guide to Business Continuity Management.

Our Capability

Our approach to Business Continuity Management is based around the requirements of the business and which is formalised through the deployment of a risk assessment.

Our best practice methodology enables us to develop plans that reflect your organisation's needs.

Scoping

All of our BCM projects, as with our ISO27001 programmes, begin with a scoping exercise that will help to define the boundaries of the exercise, ensuring that investment in the process is maximized and only those business process of most importance are focused upon.

Business Impact Assessment

As a critical stage next stage the Business Impact Assessment will allow our consultants to begin to understand your organisation, identifying the critical business processes, the potential impact to them following a variety of interruptions, the wider impact that this may have on the organisation, and most importantly the minimum requirements for ensuring that these processes remain operational, e.g. Staff, Premises, Technology, Communications.

Risk Assessment

See our section on Risk Assessment for full details, but in short this activity will identify the risks, threats and vulnerabilities that may be imposed on the identified processes.

BCM Strategy

Using the information gathered during the Business Impact and Risk Assessments our consultants will then begin the process of developing a formal Business Continuity Plan for your organisation that will be a combination of risk reduction and recovery methods and options.

We not only have the technical expertise to help to deploy these, it is also worth noting that we have no affiliation with any Disaster Recovery suppliers allowing us to develop impartial plans that are design purely on the basis of what is best for your requirements.

Crisis Management Plans

An additional, but often overlooked area is the development of a crisis management plan. Even the best BCM structure will not prevent incidents from happening, these are inevitable, what is critical is that the organisation responds in a timely manner, helping to further minimise business disruption.

A crisis management plan will help to formalize decision making in what is potentially a stressful situation, whilst regular training will ensure that those in key positions will be prepared. A timely response may save your reputation or brand.

Acenseo will help by developing a plan that will:

1. Identifying key staff
2. Identifying key tasks
3. Implementing and test strategies for internal and external communication
4. Help to deal and manage staff in the event of an incident
5. Interact with the emergency services

Ongoing Maintenance

No Business Continuity Management strategy will be successful if it is not constantly exercised, reviewed, updated and improved. Acenseo will help you to develop a testing strategy that will confirm current procedures and allow you to assess if they are meeting their stated objectives.

Further information on our services is available from our marketing team on 0118 979 0000 or email us atinfo@acenseo.com.

Visit our website http://www.acenseo.com