Business Continuity Awareness Week

This annual event, organized by the Business Continuity Institute, is designed to raise awareness of business continuity and resilience. This year it will be held May 16-23. The theme for the week is return on investment and it will look at the many advantages of business continuity. For example, your insurance premiums may be reduced (or not increased by as much!) if you an effective business continuity plan. Or possibly the analysis of you did of your organization has identified the potential for efficiency savings. Have you thought about what your business continuity ROI could be?

Here are three examples of potential ROI from taking a day-to-day resiliency approach. (Item #1)     Despite the clear and increasing risks, some companies do not implement business continuity solutions due to a lack of resources and the difficulty in determining the ROI. (Item #2)     This brief video discusses ROI and KPI measurement. (Item #3)    

We don't have business continuity plans and BIA's for our personal lives.... so how, when knowing what you know about resiliency, risk, uncertainty, and recovery do you handle this away from the office? (Item #4)     How do you measure the unmeasurable? (Item #5)     When the question of ROI for business continuity planning arises, keep in mind that it is the wrong question to ask. (Item #6)    

As always, I look forward to hearing about your concerns with regard to business continuity. If there are any topics that you'd like to see covered, email me at [email protected].

Bob Mellinger, President
Attainium Corp

1. Drive Return on Business Continuity Planning Investment

What if your business continuity planning (BCP) could actually reduce ongoing costs rather than be just an expensive insurance policy? The key to realizing ongoing value from your BCP, not to mention making a strong case for BCP investment, is to treat it as a means to achieve day-to-day resiliency regardless of whether you ever experience a disaster. Traditionally, business continuity planning (BCP) has been viewed as a pure cost to the company -- an insurance policy that only pays out if there is a disaster. But it doesn't have to be this way.
https://quorum.net/roi-bcp/

2. Is there an ROI in IT Disaster Recovery?

You can think of disaster recovery plans and solutions as a form of insurance to protect your business. As with any insurance policy, there are premiums to pay and it is important to make a strong business case for an investment. Does it make sense for you to get a disaster recovery solution? What is the best deployment option? How does the cloud impact today's DR solutions? How do you get your executive team to accept that insuring corporate data with a DR solution is necessary? The best way is to demonstrate that disaster recovery is not a cost -- but an investment with a positive ROI.
http://www.acronis.com/es-es/blog/posts/there-roi-it-disaster-recovery

3. Business Continuity ROI and KPI Measurement

The math of Business Continuity starts with a business impact analysis to determine your daily loss figure. In this video, EssentiaLink CEO Bill Douglas explains what a daily loss figure is and gives an example of how to use it in Business Continuity planning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzf-UfE4iRY

4. Business Continuity Gets Personal

Each of us likes to have a plan... To know what is around the corner and what could be coming a bit further along. This is what lies at the heart of what we do. Being ready and prepared for the unexpected and the expected. The ability to remain constant and viable. Keeping your business moving forward, ensuring your employees are secure and happy, and trying to ensure progress and success. For this to be a real possibility in your business life, it also must be the case in your personal life.
http://www.drj.com/articles/online-exclusive/business-continuity-gets-personal.html

5. Measurement: the next big resilience challenge?

Resilience is a journey, not a destination. It is a dynamic characteristic because every organization is in a constant state of change, as are the environment in which it operates and its direct and indirect inter-dependencies with other organizations. An organization may pursue resilience but may only be demonstrably resilient to a particular disruptive event at a moment in time. So, how do you measure resilience? If you cannot measure its benefits, then making the business case for a resilience program will be challenging. Quantifying return on investment (ROI) requires some form of measurement to show how the investment input results in valuable output.
http://www.continuitycentral.com/index.php/news/resilience-news/802-measurement-the-next-big-resilience-challenge

6. Final Thoughts - The Real Return on Investment for BCP

The reason the issue of ROI occurs with such frequency in the corporate setting is a product of cost justification. One of the initial considerations associated with the disbursement of company assets is the justification for that expenditure. It is during the initial evaluation that one of two categories of justification is realized: (a) there is an expected financial benefit for this expenditure or (b) the realization that the expenditure makes good business sense in and of itself. Business continuity planning is by no means the only expenditure that falls into this second category.
http://www.continuityinsights.com/article/2006/12/final-thoughts-real-return-investment-bcp\