Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Planning

The Disaster event in United States on September 11th, 2001 must have forced many organizations’ executive management to question whether their organization would survive such a disaster. Besides the terrible toll that was taken on human life, many businesses, especially those in New York City, were affected severely. Some will never recover. There were, however, many examples where good business continuity planning resulted in successful resumption of operations.

These example came from businesses and organizations that had made the investment in a frequent disaster plan tests and updates, regular real-time backup of their data, and establishment of hot site capabilities just to name a few of them.

We have also seen how catastrophic events such as tsunamis can disrupt the flow of business on a global scale. Another bad news is that happened on Saturday September 22nd, 2007 in Dar es Salaam where Sea Cliff Hotel was gutted by fire.

Having a business continuity plan in place can help You do more than just anticipate disaster. Business continuity management (BCM) is concerned with managing risk to ensure that, at all times, an organization can continue operating to, at least, a pre-determined minimum level. It should be focused on entire business processes rather than solely on specific assets such as IT systems. This is where RCG can help You to accomplish your strategic objectives despite disruptions

Our Approach

RCG follows a phased approach to design a Business Continuity Management System (BCMS) for an organization. The phases are outlined below.

  • We begin with raising awareness to the senior management and staff to understand Business Continuity Process and how you can benefits from having a workable BCM program. This will help to maintain the enthusiasm for undertaking a BCM programme
  • Formulation of BCM policy which provide the foundation for BCM capability, development and implementation; it will outline the level of importance and value that organization places on BCM.

  • Next we study business and mission critical activities and single point of failures

  • Next we carry out a Business Impact Analysis (BIA)

  • We then carry out a Risk/Threat Analysis to identify single point of failures and critical dependencies

  • Next comes identifying a suitable BCM strategy which can be implemented at various levels in the organization

  • An integral part of the approach is the Response phase. Here, the RCG team will help develop and implement a business continuity management response based on the Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) and Recovery Time Objectives (RTO)

  • Next comes the BCM Training and Awareness session which will help all the employees to get acquainted to the BCM

  • Finally, the whole BCP is put to test and different types of walkthroughs and simulations are conducted. The BCM is evaluated and improved upon on the basis of the results from these tests/audits
Our approach is consistent with internationally recognized good business continuity management practice published by the Business Continuity Institute (BCI) – PAS 56 and also with British Standard for Business Continuity, BS 25999.