| Business continuity audits of critical suppliers Is there a weak link in your business
continuity planning process? Business continuity planning doesn’t stop at the doorstep of your company. Many organisations have a certain number of critical suppliers without whom business as usual would be threatened. If the risk assessment and business impact analysis parts of the business continuity process are conducted effectively and thoroughly, then you should have accurate information on who your critical suppliers are. But what do you do with this information? The ideal solution is to audit both the business continuity plans and the financial health of critical suppliers. The depth to which this can be carried out will depend on the financial and human resources of your business continuity department and the willingness of critical suppliers to cooperate. How important such an audit is will depend on the type of supply chain operation your business operates and the prevalence of competitors to your critical suppliers. If your business operates in a just-in-time environment and there are few alternative sources of supply for a particular mission critical item, then a business continuity audit of the supplier of that item will be vital. Although the concept of critical supplier business continuity audits has been around since the Y2K days, the anecdotal evidence suggests that few companies are conducting such audits. For some, this failure may point to a very real weak link in the business continuity planning process. Author: David Honour, editor, ContinuityCentral.com * Got a ‘quick comment’ that you would like to make on any business continuity matter? Click here to e-mail Continuity Central.
•Date:4th
July 2003 •Region: Worldwide •Type:
Article •Topic: BC
general |
