|
 As
new business continuity standards and guidelines continue to appear
around the world are we risking over complicating the subject?
By David Honour
The mid to late 1990s was boom time for the quality industry, as
businesses started to realise that quality was no longer a ‘grudge
purchase’, but that well-managed quality processes were an
essential aspect of any successful business. Why mention the above?
Because I believe that there are many parallels between the business
continuity and quality professions. Business continuity has yet
to experience the paradigm shift from grudge purchase to essential
business requirement, but this change is on the way.
The quality example also displays some of the
threats facing the business continuity profession, if it allows
the push for standards to transform business continuity from ‘structured
common sense’ into a black art, capable of being understood
only by consulting companies or by professionals who have undergone
years of training.
Let’s look back to the quality ‘revolution’.
In the UK, first there was BS 5750 which was (is) essentially a
relatively straightforward method for understanding your company’s
quality processes: you had to understand what your company did,
how to do this to a quality threshold which you determined and you
had to document those processes.
Then came Total Quality Management (note the
capitalisation!): an attempt to turn quality into a discipline in
its own right. This was a complex philosophical process which took
quality to its extreme. It quickly fell of the radar of all but
the largest and trendiest companies.
Business continuity risks going down the TQM route: turning a relatively
simple business process into an over-complex management discipline.
Most businesses don’t need to follow complex procedures in
order to implement business continuity. The following points cover
the business continuity needs of the vast majority of organisations:
1) Protect your data and ensure you can restore
it again if you lose your IT systems;
2) Ensure you can either divert incoming telephone calls or at least
be able to provide an emergency holding message;
3) Identify any other parts of your business you couldn’t
do without for more than a couple of days and do something to a)
protect these b) recover these quickly following an incident;
4) Make sure you have the up-to-date contact details for all staff
in an off-site location which you could access quickly following
a disaster;
5) Identify the people who will lead / coordinate the above activities
in a crisis;
6) Test the above once a year to make sure it still works.
It’s been said before, but needs saying again: keep it simple.
David
Honour is editor of Continuity Central
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•Date:
1st October 2004 •Region: World •Type:
Article •Topic: BC
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