Business Continuity Planning For an SME Case Study
The Client
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.
The Solution
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.
8 members of staff attended the exercise; this included a mixture of primary members of the Crisis Management team and their designated substitutes as would likely occur in a real incident.
The exercise was based on a ‘flu pandemic scenario which unfolded over a 2½ hour timeframe.
As well as giving the team practise in working together, the exercise identified some specific areas where the existing plan was weak including:
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 ISO 22301, on which to develop more sophisticated plans as the company grows.
How Can Cambridge Risk Solutions Help?
View more of our case studies of recent client projects.