Benefits of enterprise modelling for business continuity management

Gary Clarke, MBCI, presents a paper which describes the many ways in which enterprise modelling can support business continuity management.

Abstract
Enterprise modelling (EM) is a method which can be used to create a logical model of an organization. It is prevalent in large, complex organizations and there are well-established standards in use which provide form and inter-operability to EM practices. EM tools are mature and widely-available.

EM provides a virtual representation of an organization's structure, inter-relationships and dependencies.

Using EM is beneficial to business continuity management because it supports the understanding of an organization’s critical architecture, processes and resources. Most importantly, it makes visible the complex web of inter-relationships between all of these attributes.

At an initial level, is it possible to map the organization using drawing tools such as Visio or even PowerPoint. But real-life organizations are far more complicated and their complexity quickly overwhelms this ‘flat’ modelling approach. The practical way to map organizations in realistic detail is to use EM.

EM brings the additional benefit of making the data available to other parts of the organization (e.g. resource planning or business process engineering) which in turn increases the value of the data and justifies the effort required to keep the data up-to-date.

An EM tool provides:
* A relational database of assets and their inter-relationships;
* A graphical representation of these assets;
* What-if scenario modelling, showing the ‘ripple’ effect of changes to any one component of the organization.

Applying EM to business continuity

EM can be applied to:

* Business impact analysis
- Identify critical products and services and what they depend upon;

* Risk analysis
- Identify where the organization is exposed to particular threats

* Business continuity strategy design
- Show which processes can be deferred and describe how they might be transferred elsewhere;

* Training and exercising
- Provide what-if simulations that can be used for exercises and rehearsals;

* Incident management support
- Modelling, in real-time, the effects of an incident on an organization.

By applying the enterprise modelling approach described in this paper, business continuity managers can:

1. Make it simpler and easier to understand the complex nature and inter-dependencies of large organizations.

2. Use this information to design better business continuity strategies and plans.

3. Quickly model the effects on the whole organization of the loss of any number of departments or infrastructure assets.

4. Create additional value for their organizations by making the data that they capture exploitable and re-usable for other management tasks in the organization.

Read the paper (PDF)

About the author
Gary Clarke, MBCI, is a senior consultant with VEGA Consulting Services Ltd, a professional services company that delivers technology-enabled change in complex environments, often where security and resilience are key. VEGA offers clients independent expert advice and pragmatic solutions and has helped a variety of public sector and commercial organizations meet their business resilience challenges with confidence.

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•Date: 27th Nov 2009• Region: UK/World •Type: Article •Topic: BC general
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