Ondersteuning Business Continuity Management (BCM)

What is Business Continuity Management?

Business Continuity Management (“BCM”) comprises everything a company does to identify potential threats that jeopardise the continuity of business operations and to act on as well as monitor this. By actively thinking about and dealing with this, the adverse consequences of a disruptive incident can be reduced or even avoided altogether. BCM therefore includes the preparation of a Business Continuity Plan (“BCP”).

A BCP sets out the business-critical processes that have to keep going (in a limited form) after a disruptive incident. The purpose of a BCP is to give the company guidance on what steps to take after a disruptive incident has occurred. It identifies who is responsible for what, in order to ensure that the most important processes can get up and running again as soon as possible. The BCP also sets out how the potential consequences can be mitigated.

When continuity is not properly safeguarded within a company, it poses several risks, like reputational damage and financial consequences (such as lost sales), but also additional costs that need to be incurred to get everything back in order. Cuccibu recommends implementing sound Business Continuity Management to minimise, as far as possible, such damage in the case of an impending disruptive incident, or when preventing it. This is not only to mitigate (or prevent) negative consequences, but also to make the company stronger; to know what you need to run your critical processes; to think about whether you could work differently, should that be necessary. This can also lead to input which makes processes more efficient and effective.