Business Continuity Management - Essay Example

Some of the components of a business continuity plan are business and disaster recovery, crisis, incident and emergency management, product recall and unforeseen event planning. For this Business Continuity Management to be functional, it has to be grown (Eliot et al 2009, 1). From a simple obscure branch, it grows into a completely fledged conventional business practice. To affect this, one has to have some acquaintance in the key concepts of building a flexible organization and involve the use of a standard (BS 25999) as a channel towards best practice (Blyth 2009, p10).

In this paper, we look at the implementation of business continuity management, its value with an effort to ascertain the context in which it is implemented in dealing with challenges that come with any business environment. Getting started with business continuity management According to Hiles (2010, p110) Business Continuity Management is a major component of comprehensive emergency management plan. It is thus an important asset for any organization, for it allows quick recovery form a disruption.

It is not that organizations hope for disruptions to happen; it is only that in the current business environment, globalization has come with various uncertainties (Blyth 2009, p10).Therefore, a Business Continuity Management plan has to be clear to the participators, to the point and made in a way that it is directly meeting the needs of any given organization. It is, therefore, advisable that it becomes part of the manner in which an organization operates. In the past, this had always been a reserve for big multinational corporations.

However, the recent past has seen a rise in the employment of such a plan with companies rising to the occasion of protecting its interest’s and its reputation (Eliot et al 2009, p1). Therefore, the firs t step involves the acceptance of its usefulness by the senior managers and the boss of a company. However, it should be of essence that this involves every employee, for it is part of their responsibilities. As a matter of fact, the existence of a business continuity coordinator is very essential.

This is because; his team is given the responsibility of spearheading the whole process by providing the resources needed to manage the implementation of this BC program. Some of these steps concerned in the progress of this plan include: Understand the vulnerabilities of one’s company. Define the business continuity strategy. Develop a plan. Cultural change. Rehearse the plan. Background Business Continuity Management has its origins in catastrophe recovery planning. From this perspective, it grew to emergency planning before maturing into the ultimate new tactically focused management concern it is today(Blyth 2009, pp1-29).

Having its roots in information systems, it has afforded to move from this technical focus to compliance focus. Some businesses are seeing beyond this s to a strategic focus. This has mainly been due to the changing requirements of both the stakeholders and the organizations. Relevance of business continuity management It is important for businesses that operate under risky environments such as finance, telecommunications, transportation and civic division to embrace this plan. This is because, the ability of them continuing to operate is majorly dependent on the organization as well