In a broad sense, business continuity management is a part of risk management for organisations which helps them to achieve two key objectives. The first is minimising the likelihood of risks or disruptions to the operations. The second objective is responding to the risks when they happen to minimise their impacts on the business, employees, customers, and stakeholders. While every business in today’s uncertain world needs a planned approach for business continuity, achieving the ISO 22301 certification is the best way to ensure that. It provides a framework for establishing a competent and feasible Business Continuity Management System (BCMS).
Implementing a BCMS that fits your organisational context and can deal with the possible risks or disruptions can be challenging. To help you in the implementation, this blog post presents some elementary guidelines. Following them will ensure the successful certification of your business in the end.
Must-follow Guidelines to Establish the BCMS for the ISO 22301 Certification
Plan the BCMS
The BCMS must emphasise 3 crucial aspects to be successful in your organisation. They are Continuity, Resilience, and Response. While continuity implies the capability to deliver same-quality products or services uninterrupted to the customers during any risks/disruptive events, resilience is about the ability to avoid or withstand such events and continue to operate. Response, on the other hand, is about undertaking coordinated actions or measures to mitigate an event and restore the usual state of operations to deliver products/services.
Thus, while planning the BCMS for your organisation, keep these three aspects in mind. These are the keys to understanding the requirement of continuity in your business and so will help you design the BCMS.
Map the core processes of your business
This is a necessary step that helps you determine how the BCMS will be incorporated into your organisation. Identify all your business processes, including internal and external processes, and create a flowchart of your supply chain to establish how the products/services are delivered. You should also determine the timeline of each process including the different stages of delivery.
Decide the timeline for disruption
When you have a proper process map, you can decide the tolerance level for disruption. When you know what the key processes in your supply chain are and how they contribute to the final products/services, you can easily estimate their timeline of disruption. It means the maximum period of disruption that each process can endure to continue the delivery of products/services. Depending on the tolerance limit, you can prioritise your processes and determine appropriate measures or strategies for continuity.
Set objectives
You will get a rough idea of your business continuity approach from the above steps. So, now it is time to settle the objectives that your BCMS should aim to achieve. No doubt, the objectives will depend on your processes, possible disruptive events, impacts of disruptions, and tolerance of disruption.
Structure the continuity management processes
When the objectives are set, you need to finally structure the BCMS. It should cover your processes and stages of the supply chain and distribution. However, it is not necessary to include all your processes and you can eliminate the ones that have the least role in the product cycle. To establish a well-structured BCMS in your organisation, you should break down your continuity management processes into sub-processes. Each sub-process will focus on a definite part or operation of your business such as IT, on-site management, customer relationship management, employees, offshore sites, and delivery.
If you follow these principal guidelines and walk through these stages accordingly, you will have the right BCMS in place. Not only that, but it will also be the robust management system that will make your organisation ready for the ISO 22301 certification. Thus, if you haven’t yet planned your approach to business continuity, these guidelines will enable you to implement the most effective and compliant BCMS.
