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Take
these steps to gain support for your initiatives:
• |
Walk
through a crisis scenario, taking it one step
further than the crisis management plans. Show
senior management how critical business processes
could be affected by a disaster. Managing the
crisis and recovering the technology are critical
to the survival of the midsize enterprise. However,
lack of employee, department and business process
plans will lead to chaos, seriously undermining
any recovery efforts and perhaps even canceling
out the positive efforts of crisis management
and disaster recovery planning efforts. The worst
time to plan is during a disaster. All employees
must know their course of action when disaster
strikes. |
• |
Perform a business impact assessment.
This includes assessing the impact of business
interruptions over varying time periods on each
business process: direct costs (such as lost revenue
and productivity) and indirect effects (such as
relationships and reputation with customers, suppliers
and business partners). Such an assessment can
be done directly by each business process owner,
or with assistance from IT or other project managers
that understand the process and can pull together
the results across business units. Findings can
then be used to win support, commitment and funding
for comprehensive business continuity planning,
including investing in business recovery and resumption
plans. |
• |
Make the senior management team aware
of incidents that have occurred within and outside
the company: inventory and report all
incidents, specifically focusing on facility outages;
show videotapes of actual incidents and their
aftermath, discussing how a more coordinated,
planned response could have been undertaken for
the advantage of the enterprise; and talk with
other regional enterprises that
have experienced disasters. |
Discuss
strategies and solutions for your key IT initiatives
with your peers at Midsize Enterprise Summit 2004.
Click
here for details.
Reference
Research Note
Midsize Enterprise Summit Business Continuity
Questions
Published: February 6, 2003
Author: D. Scott and F. DeSalvo, Gartner, Inc.
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