It’s hard to imagine, but some companies still don’t see any positive value in implementing a business continuity management (BCM) programme. For many, it’s just a box to tick in order to comply with King III or other governance codes to which the board adheres.
“The tick-box approach to compliance is always counterproductive because there’s usually good reason for the requirement in the first place. That’s particularly true when it comes to BCM because it deals not only with overcoming disasters but a company’s long-term sustainability and, in fact, it’s general ability to succeed,” argues Miles Murray, General Manager: Sales at ContinuitySA.
Murray says that BCM’s greater role can be seen in the broad terms of the ISO 22301 standard for BCM published in 2012, which positions the discipline within the broader concept of “societal security” and thus makes BCM part of the drive to build sustainability.
The growing interest in sustainability, he says, is the result of the acknowledgement that business success is built not just on a company’s own efforts, but those of its partners, and the communities amongst which it exists.
In other words, BCM has broadened its focus in line with the realisation that stakeholders in a business are also shareholders in a sense, and thus that more than one group has a vested interest in a company’s ability to recover from a disaster, whether it’s a flu pandemic, a warehouse fire or a hurricane.
When a company starts thinking about business continuity, its point of departure is an assessment of the risks that it faces and what their impact would be. This analysis will take into account the obvious internally focused risks but also those that are external.
The latter would include business risks along the supply chain. What happens if Supplier A can’t deliver? What’s Plan B?—to non-business risks like a natural disaster or, more currently, the inability to get products to or from certain West African countries owing to Ebola.
Once a company starts taking this approach, its resilience in bouncing back from a disaster is increased but that’s not where the benefits end, says Murray. At the same time, its whole governance framework is strengthened with all the positive benefits that entails, and the board can manage its financial exposures much more proactively.
“Another key benefit of BCM is that it enhances employees’ confidence in the company, and thus contributes to employee engagement, something that’s absolutely vital,” he notes. “Client confidence is also strengthened, which is always good for landing contracts. It goes without saying that the company needs to communicate its BCM stance to these important stakeholder groups.”
Murray goes further, saying that this type of approach creates a forward-thinking organisation, one that’s in a better position to identify looming risks but also opportunities as well.
“Being proactive about risk mitigation also means that the company is more likely to be proactive about spotting gaps in the market that it can exploit,” Murray explains. “Such a company is inevitably going to be more successful in the long run, to the benefit of both its shareholders and its broader body of stakeholders. When a company truly embraces the business continuity journey, it sets itself on the path to success.”
