Customer Focus - understanding needs and requirements of customers and working to improve your performance. In BC planning it is vital that you fully understand your customers’ needs and are aware of the potential impact of losing capability to supply. - Leadership – work so that everyone in the business has a common vision and are all involved in achieving your objectives. In business continuity planning the senior management must take the lead and authorize the plan to be developed.
- Involvement of People – All people in the business must be involved in system development. The same applies to the development of you BC plan. Communication throughout the business is a key activity.
- Process Approach – business activities and resources are managed as a process. A step by step process approach to BC plan development reduces the workload.
- System Approach To Management – all processes are managed as a system. Your BC plan can be treated as a system of procedures and documents to be implemented during a business disruption.
- Continual Improvement – you must work to continually improve your performance. This also applies to your business continuity plan. The most important aspect of the plan is that it is regularly tested and kept up to date. Update training of employees is a major improvement activity for your BC plan development.
- Factual Approach To Decision Making – business decisions are based on accurate data analysis and information. For a BC plan to be effective, the decisions you make must be based on factual data.
- Mutually Beneficial Supplier Relationships – develop relationships to enhance the abilities of both the supplier and customer. In a continuity situation, good relationships with your suppliers are as important as good relationships with your customers.
The ISO 9001 framework applied to BC planning
The framework that an ISO 9001 management system puts in place provides a business with a discipline that can assist you to develop and manage a BC plan.
This framework consists of:
* Management review
* Internal process review
* Corrective action.
For management review agenda items include corrective action, results of reviews and performance objectives. Internal process review is a four step process - prepare, conduct, report and follow up. Corrective action has two phases – correction and then action to prevent recurrence.We recommend a four stage approach to BC planning.
* Plan the BC project
* Analyse business impact of disruptions
* Develop BC plan contents
* Manage the BC plan.
Leverage the existing quality processes by setting up the BC plan development as a project and using the ISO 9001 management review, internal audit and corrective action processes to monitor the progress.
For example, the developed BC plan needs to be audited and tested using drills and exercises. Using the ISO 9001 internal audit and management review processes ensures that these audits, drill and exercises can be scheduled, performed and managed using existing processes and practices.
Conclusions
A certified ISO 9001 Quality Management System can be leveraged to reduce the time and cost of developing and managing a BC plan.
Existing documented processes and the framework for business improvement are the keys to achieving leverage in BC planning.