BCM Planning in an SME

The client is a small consultancy, based in central London; they initially approached Cambridge Risk Solutions because they had been asked by a major client to develop a formal Business Continuity plan.

One of our consultants completed the BIA and Risk Assessment in a single day.  Combining the outputs from these analyses led to a BCM strategy based around a combination of enabling staff to work effectively from home and agreeing a mutual support arrangement with a sister company to provide workspace for a small number of staff in the event of a disruption.

Our consultant then spent another day constructing a simple BCM plan to implement this strategy including:

• Establishing an Incident Management Team;
• Documenting the existing IT DR arrangements;
• Improving remote access to corporate IT systems; and
• Setting up phone redirection to the alternative site.

Whilst this initial BCM plan is fairly basic, it provides a sound basis, consistent with the principles of BS 25999, on which to develop more sophisticated plans as the company grows.