| Comment: making the case for business continuity advocacy
The need for organisations of all sizes to invest in business continuity is clear. A basic business continuity plan will help protect organisations from disasters and will ensure their survival following a business interruption. A more advanced approach to business continuity provides a positive benefit to a company, not just in times of crisis but every day. This is business continuity management and is about creating resilient businesses; companies that are flexible and which can quickly identify and respond to challenges and threats. It’s about optimising process availability, so that businesses can operate to their maximum efficiency at all times. The company that successfully operates a true business continuity management culture will have systems that are more effective; more efficient; more fully utilised. It will maximise the return on investment it makes in business processes. It will be more productive, more reliable and an excellent partner and supplier. When it sets a deadline it will meet it. When it undertakes a project, it will deliver on time and on budget. Basic business continuity tends to be disaster focused; advanced business continuity tends to be business process focused. Whichever approach is taken, there are positive benefits. However, despite the benefits, it is still only a minority of European businesses that take business continuity seriously. The uptake is higher amongst larger companies, as would be expected, but in the SME (small and medium sized enterprise) sector, business continuity is a rarity. I believe that this won’t change until national governments within Europe become advocates for business continuity. And this is unlikely to happen unless the European Commission (EC) takes a lead role. Amongst a range of other departments, the European Commission operates the Enterprise Directorate-General. In its own words the Enterprise Directorate-General is responsible for measures to enhance the competitiveness of European enterprises. Its role is to help create an environment in which firms can thrive. The Enterprise Directorate-General includes seven departments which deal with issues such as ‘Enterprise policy’, ‘Promotion of entrepreneurship and SMEs’ and ‘Environmental aspects of enterprise policy’. I believe there should be an eighth department; one which is responsible for providing advocacy and advice to European organisations about the importance of business continuity and disaster recovery planning. The department’s remit should be: * To encourage European Union (EU) governments to implement business continuity management within governmental organisations; * To disseminate business continuity information and advice to EC businesses * To encourage EC businesses to implement business continuity plans * To initiate and fund research into business continuity * To encourage each EU country to appoint a business continuity advocate within their own governmental structures who would be responsible for the above areas within their own nation. For example, in the case of the UK government, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) would be the obvious department to take a lead. Next week Continuity Central will be launching a lobbying campaign based on the above. We will be writing to the European Commission and to national governments to make the case for the need for coordinated business continuity advocacy. The letter will be published initially on the Continuity Central website and all European Union based business continuity professionals, companies and organisations will be invited to sign it. Individually we will not be heard, collectively we may be. If you would like to receive a copy of the draft letter by e-mail, simply contact editor@continuitycentral.com Your feedback and input would be very welcome. David Honour is editor of Continuity Central
•Date:
17th Sept 2004 •Region: UK/W.Europe •Type:
Article •Topic: BC
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