Needhams are experts in business resilience and can help your business to develop a business continuity plan that is bespoke to your organisation and the challenges that you may face. We work with businesses, following the defined process set by the Business Continuity Management System, to ensure that the plans that we develop for you will be appropriate for your business, dependable and pragmatic to implement.
Business continuity planning is essential for maintaining business operations in the face of adversity. Embedding an appropriate plan into your reference documentation set ensures that all of your personnel understand and acknowledge their responsibilities. Your business continuity plan will define the actions that must be taken and by whom in an emergency situation.
We follow a five step process to ensure that, whilst bespoke to your business, your plan remains compliant with the ISO 22301 standard.
Step 1 - Write the policy and framework document
The policy and framework document serves as a summary of the more detailed assessments conducted in later stages. It is primarily templated but personalised as required to capture the risks that are applicable to your business.
Step 2 - Develop a Business Impact Analysis and conduct a risk assessment
We will conduct a thorough risk assessment, analysing pertinent risks in order to develop an appropriate management strategy. The Business Impact Analysis will focus on business-critical activities which are fundamental to the survival of your organisation.
Step 3 - Design a strategy and solutions to protect critical activities
The strategy and solutions that we design will be tailored to meet the needs of your business. They will be clearly and concisely written, with bullet points and diagrams favoured for ease of reference. They will detail the actions that must be taken, and by whom, in the event of a high impact risk materialising.
Step 4 - Develop a plan with supporting annexes and specific scenarios
The plan will include specific scenarios that have been agreed by your organisation as having a realistic likelihood of occurrence or an impact significant enough to warrant mitigating based on the earlier risk assessment. The plan will address the measures that must be taken in the event of one or more of the risks occurring.
The annex library will include all crisis management documentation, flowcharts and record sheets that will be necessary for reporting purposes in the event that the business continuity plan is enacted.
Step 5 - Validate the planning through the exercise process
To ensure that the business continuity planning exercise will prove fruitful in the event that it is enacted, it will be tested in a walkthrough exercise. This will be a mockup of a situation detailed within the plan and the plan will be assessed on the ability of the organisation to use it effectively. It will identify any shortcomings and allow them to be examined and updated prior to final signoff.
The end result will be a bespoke business continuity plan that is fit for purpose.