Our Take on Business Continuity Management

Look up Business Continuity Management (BCM) and you will come across scores of nuanced and sometimes conflicting definitions of the term. Or you’ll find other terms that are used interchangeably with or instead of business continuity management.

Here are just a few:

• Contingency planning
• Disaster Recovery
• Resiliency Management
• Risk Management
• Emergency Operations
• Regulatory Compliance

While all of those terms are not entirely wrong, they are only pieces of a much bigger puzzle, so in that way, incomplete and kind of imprecise.

Here’s the skinny, ContinuityWorks style:

Business continuity management (affectionately referenced throughout our website as BCM) is the practice of assessing your business for risks and the potential negative impacts that might be caused by interruption events or disasters of varying duration, intensity and scope. Its mission is to eliminate or mitigate risk toward the protection of your people and business. The fun part is then deciding which risks to protect from with control strategies, which to plan for, and how to exercise responses to the most likely events. After all, business continuity plans that are not exercised are just fat notebooks, paper or virtual.

The potential overwhelm factor is high, which is why BCM is best managed with an internal program that is efficient, sustainable, cost effective, and easily replicated at multiple locations.

A good Business Continuity Program should focus on your most critical and time-sensitive business processes and be an integral component of your business culture.

At ContinuityWorks, we like to keep things simple and practical. We consider Business Continuity Management a self-empowerment tool that:

• is the best way to mind your own business. (Pun intended.)
• sends a great message to your clients, customers, stakeholders, vendors and community that you care enough about being around for them to care about yourself.
• increases your chances of surviving business challenges and interruption events of all kinds.

At ContinuityWorks, our mission is to bring business continuity management to businesses of all sizes, with a special preference for those that are committed to a culture of preparedness.

Our BCM coaching / mentoring, training, and advisory engagements include work with corporate leaders, business owners and personnel groups, as well as individuals with a vested interest in their personal and professional continuity and that of their start-up or existing business. (Check out our About You page.)