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Viewpoint: Deriving the full benefits of BCM

By Michael Davies
Johannesburg, 03 Aug 2015
Doing business continuity right offers widespread benefits, says Michael Davies, CEO of ContinuitySA.
Doing business continuity right offers widespread benefits, says Michael Davies, CEO of ContinuitySA.

In previous articles, I have argued that constantly enhancing a company's resilience is its best defence against disasters - especially those of the black-swan kind.

This means integrating resilience into the very culture of the company, so that every decision considers the need to build recovery into the process. In other words, practising true business continuity management.

All of this is good for improving the company's ability to cope with disasters, and it's worth doing just for that. But the benefits are more far-ranging and include:

* A forward-thinking company. Thinking about operations in terms of recovery means looking ahead, and designing them to be as robust and simple as possible. Complexity is difficult to deal with in a crisis, but elegant and simple processes and operations are by their nature easier to manage, less expensive in the long run and can be changed more easily (something that's of great value in today's fast-paced competitive environment). When resilience is top of mind, it's also natural to start thinking about the enterprise as a whole - how does this affect that? - thus helping to break down the siloes that remain such a barrier to corporate performance.
* Improved corporate governance. To implement business continuity properly means understanding exactly how the company works at a very granular level - particularly what the relative importance of each process, business unit and even role is. This level of understanding is something that few companies actually have, and gaining it improves corporate governance substantially.
* Reduced risk and financial exposure. The process of identifying and mitigating risk, and making the company more generally resilient, is itself a way to reduce risk - and the financial penalties that come with disasters.
* Enhanced confidence in the company. Once staff members understand that the company takes business continuity seriously, and is thus more resilient, they automatically feel that their jobs are safer. They are likely to be more loyal and productive as a result. The same is true for the wider group of corporate stakeholders, including shareholders, business partners, customers and the wider community.

To conclude: practise true business continuity not just because it makes your company more resilient in the face of disaster, but also because it makes a better company all round.

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