Brief

The need for BCM

Experts discussing their views on business continuity and disaster recovery at the seminar organized by Omnitech InfoSolutions

Today’s ever-changing scenario in the business sector makes business continuity and disaster management imperative functions for any company. As technology is becoming the backbone of business, there is a paradigm shift taking place in how it is transacted. Business growth and survival depend on three aspects—innovation, efficiency and resilience.

In the era where all the world’s a stage, Omnitech InfoSolutions helps corporations deal with risks that pertain to people, physical assets or systems.

A Disaster Recovery-Business Continuity Plan (DR/BCP) must deliver an end-to-end DR service, according to global standards and processes based on SOX and BASEL II. The BC-DR planning methodology follows various stages of the business lifecycle while preparing for a contingency plan these being risk analysis and review, business impact analysis, recovery strategy, plan development, awareness and training, testing and exercising, program and project management. It provides quick uninterrupted services concentrating on critical business functions and also charts out an alternative processing capability without waiting for the doomsday scenario.

Business Continuity Management (BCM) improves resilience, restores the ability to deliver products and services and manages business disruptions. The future of BCM will be integrated across functions and no longer remain just an IT specialty, it will be indispensable to business strategy and will provide for an independent auditable process.

Training costs Rs.1.1 lakh, and is delivered in localized languages. It spells out the difference between emergency response and business continuity. A survey conducted by Market Pulse on behalf of BCMI revealed that 17% of Indian companies did not have a completely planned, tested and executed BCM plan in place, while 21% kept live data in the same place that they operated from. More than half of the 54 companies that participated in the survey, of which over 70% were from the IT, BPO and BFSI segments, agreed that, on an average, there was more than one significant disruption (1.6) per year, and that the losses averaged Rs.7.7 crores.

The survey also reflected that, organizations with high levels of BCM maturity and good BCP were able to cope with the major disruptions, without significant loss of profitability, market share, customer attrition or brand impact.

However, four out of five respondents did not have a plan for loss of a facility, prolonged power or communication breakdown, disruptions from service providers or suppliers and mass absenteeism.