Business Continuity Awareness Week 2019 - Article 1

Business Continuity Awareness Week (BCAW) is an annual global event that is facilitated by the Business Continuity Institute (BCI). BCAW is a key vehicle to raising the awareness of the profession and demonstrating the value effective business continuity management can have to organisations of all types and sizes.

The theme for BCAW 2019 is “Investing in Resilience”. This can take the form of investing in people, training, looking ahead and investing in the future. In this context, ContinuityMauritius, subsidiary of BIRGER., is publishing a series of 5 articles from 13 to 17 May 2019.

The first article is Insourcing vs outsourcing Business Continuity Management (BCM): Beware of hidden costs and pitfalls, taking into consideration the Hidden financial costs, Hidden personnel costs and Hidden complexities.

Business Continuity Management (BCM) is a holistic management process that identifies potential threats to an organisation and the impacts to business operations that those threats, if realised, might cause. It provides a framework for building organisational resilience with the capability for an effective response that safeguards the interests of key stakeholders, reputation, brand and value-creating activities.

The value of an effective BCM is becoming more widely appreciated as companies take sustainability more seriously. There are various factors that need to be taken into consideration when deciding on a Business Continuity strategy. 

To many companies, it initially seems as though insourcing their BCM makes the best sense; they reason it will be cheaper, everything will be under their control and they do not risk compromising data confidentiality. But in many cases these initial assessments fail to take into account the hidden costs and pitfalls of insourcing. Before making a decision, companies should consider the possibilities of the following issues:

Hidden financial costs - Building and equipping a recovery facility requires both capital and operating budget. Organisations should also not forget the expense of maintaining the equipment and facilities, as well as renewing the technology. Alternatively, removing expensive BCM infrastructure from the balance sheet is likely to be desirable, and syndication via an outsourcer invariably reduces costs substantially.

Hidden personnel costs – It is unlikely your staff has the necessary specialist BCM expertise, so these skills will have to be acquired—at a cost. Almost certainly, extra staff will have to be hired as an effective BCM programme is complex and ongoing. And do not imagine that your existing management capabilities (such as facilities management) will be able to absorb the extra work without hiring extra staff.

Hidden Complexities - Commissioning a failover datacentre and a Work Area Recovery facility is not easy. It requires a lot of planning ahead to ensure it fulfils the business continuity strategy currently in place. It is also hard to develop the right Business Continuity Plan in line with the company’s strategies and risk appetite, and putting in place the complex business processes needed to ensure that, in the event of a disaster, the business can recover. What happens if the only or one of your key BCM resources is ill or away when a disaster happens? And, most important of all, are you testing the BCM solution regularly, and feeding the results back into the plan to ensure continuous improvement? Chances are that you aren’t, simply because the time is never right, and today’s business is always the priority.   

An Opex model allows you to conserve cash and focus your internal resources on strategic initiatives.

For more information on the topic and our Resiliency Solutions & Services, please contact us by email resiliency@birger.technology. 

BIRGER.