Surveying the Way to Effective Business Continuity Programs
As customer demands, ISO Standards, other regulations, and disruptive events continue to increase the pressure on 21st century enterprises, the need to develop well-defined and practicable business continuity plans becomes harder to overlook.
Many organizations are taking first steps on the journey to create mitigation plans that can be applied in times of crisis. However, based on the growing demands to incorporate, strategic planning and procurement decisions too are vital inclusions in these programs—yet are all too frequently neglected.
Don’t be Bound by Binders
In the course of business continuity planning, some companies’ teams are happy to congratulate themselves on identifying and prioritizing the processes to be recovered. Perhaps they have gone so far as to define roles and responsibilities to support the organization during a crisis. They might even have outlined roles, responsibilities, and processes to accelerate recovery.
However, these are merely the fundamentals necessary to collate the “break in case of emergency” binders lying on shelves in manufacturing plants around the world. In case your curiosity is piqued by this definition of basic business continuity, you can read a little more about it in a recent article published on this blog.
Some enterprises though, have taken the further steps required to turn those binders into living documents. In fact, a growing number of organizations have awoken to the value of integrating risk management into everyday business. These companies understand resiliency and know why evaluating external elements of their supply chain is a worthwhile venture.
While laggardly businesses still overwhelm their risk management teams by having them create various spreadsheets, these leaders look to solutions that are a little more progressive, collaborating with specialist technology providers like Resilinc to leverage data, and drawing upon proven tools and methodologies, such as BCP surveys.
The Tangible Benefits of BCP Surveys
Targeted BCP surveys help risk leaders improve continuity programs, by granting them access to the following five benefits:
- Visibility into the maturity of their suppliers’ business continuity planning;
- Insight into the degree of executive focus being placed on BCP by suppliers;
- A way to benchmark and measure suppliers and highlight those which are “high risk”;
- A greater understanding of risks existing within the lower tiers of the supply chain;
- A basis for policy updates that incorporate suppliers and partners into the drive for resiliency.
After capturing survey data, procurement teams can review the information and score suppliers based on their responses. Surveys can be immensely helpful in making companies aware of which supplier sites manufacture critical components, enabling them to assess the risk and impact of continuity issues at those locations. Similarly, where suppliers operate from multiple sites, those locations presenting higher levels of risk can be highlighted and targeted for action.
The Secret to Simplified Supplier Reviews
Of course, a BCP survey initiative can be complex, placing a heavy demand on business continuity managers and project teams. As already mentioned though, the right tools can make a huge difference in the effort needed to survey what may amount to hundreds of suppliers.
That’s why Resilinc developed its Supplier BCP Solution—a tool that has already been enjoying healthy levels of adoption, with more than 10,000 business continuity plans already in the database and available to platform subscribers.
A true plug and play solution for companies wishing to expand business continuity planning to their supplier networks, Resilinc Supplier BCP makes use of surveys based on the ISO22301 standard. Because so many surveys have been captured already, this is a tool can simplify the supplier review process, enabling evaluations to be completed without scrutinizing mountains of BCP documents.
Learn more About Resilinc Supplier BCP Solution
Resilinc Supplier Business Continuity Planning enables a repeatable, cost-effective way to evaluate suppliers’ business-continuity risk and recovery abilities, right down to the part/component level. The solution then integrates the captured data into a comprehensive supplier risk-assessment and mitigation program.
The BCP system leverages Resilinc’s participating-supplier network, along with its information repository to aid suppliers in data sharing and collaboration. Analytics are then leveraged to drive revenue impact analyses, supplier scoring, and risk-mitigation tactics and strategies.
To learn more about how Resilinc Supplier BCP Solution can help you develop continuity plans for your entire supply chain, contact us today, or just visit our website to request a demo.
