Why You Need a Business Continuity Management System 

Start using a business continuity management system today to prepare your enterprise for business continuity and protect employees in the face of disruptive events. Businesses are increasingly suffering from external and internal disasters due to a lack of business continuity planning. Unprepared organizations can suffer financial losses, negatively trending reputations and a large list of other problematic consequences. Again, these are just a few of the many reasons organizations need better business continuity management. Unfortunately, the reality for most businesses is that their business continuity management (BCM) is sub-par at best. In fact, these organizations are plagued by do-it-yourself solutions and un-organized processes. 

However, none of this stems from a lack of effort put forth by business continuity managers. In fact, quite the opposite is true, the typical approach to BCM is rigorous. Naturally, this causes problems for business continuity managers. For example, when reliable, up-to-date information is needed to identify critical business processes and develop business continuity plans to ensure operations continue during disruptive conditions. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed a lot of organizational weaknesses and provoked regulatory scrutiny of which is coming soon. Certainly, all these things make one thing clear; organizations need a better way. 

Business Continuity Management Systems Standardize Business Continuity Plans 

The ability for standardized business continuity management processes to exist and be accessible in a single location is a must-have for successful business continuity management. However, it’s common to hear business continuity managers say they have no standard format for their business continuity plans. These plans are stored on different sites, and managers have no connection to the risks and controls of the organization. Consequently, comments such as “People are always giving me their plans in different formats” and “The business units do not have enough time to plan and test” are all too frequent. 

IBM OpenPages business continuity management system enables organizations to centralize data related to business continuity management in one location and implement a standardized approach across the enterprise. Users can visualize data relationships to identify dependencies and gain quick access to information. Administrators can modify out-of-the-box views and workflows through the user interface to improve consistency across business units. 

Centralize Business Continuity Management Data 

Accessing the data they need when they need it is a nightmare for business continuity managers. Due to data constantly changing within an organization resulting from the development of new lines of businesses, retirement of offered services, reorganization of business units, and employee turnover. Of course, when all of this data is spread out across different locations it causes issues. 

IBM OpenPages Business Continuity Management provides one location for enterprise business continuity management data. As a result, business continuity managers can have visibility into the most current risks and controls affecting all critical business processes, people, and assets. This helps them create, update, and test business continuity plans. Role-based permissions enable defined users to have access to selected objects based on their need for the data. 

What COVID-19 Taught Us About Business Continuity Management 

Business Continuity Plans Need Flexibility 

Business continuity planning (BCP) should resemble a living document. Managers need the ability to adapt to diverse types of incidents as they arise and adjust when the latest information becomes available. Thus, the solution must be flexible to allow for the incorporation of changes to methods and procedures. 

Importance of Testing BCP 

Constant refinement to the BCP is critical to preparing for a real-life disruptive event. Testing provides the training mechanism for team members to understand how a response will be conducted and exposes flaws in the BCP. Testing is the time for BCP plans to fail. As well as, share results and improve. More testing amounts to more familiarity with the BCP. 

Result-Based Scenario Preparation 

Businesses need to focus on planning for the impact of the event, instead of the event itself. Despite a pandemic not being viewed as a likely event, the unavailability of accessing a worksite should have been. The fact that it didn’t pop on continuity manager’s radars further highlights the need for a business continuity management system. 

How Business Continuity Management Sytems Help Identify Critical Business Processes 

IBM OpenPages business continuity management includes an out-of-the-box calculation for identifying critical business processes. Specifically, this calculation defines the maximum acceptable outage of processes that comprise a business function by scoring the selections made within three fields on the Business Impact Analysis Object. Furthermore, this calculation is configurable from the user interface to add fields or customize scoring according to an organization’s methodology. 

Solution Highlights 

• Drives GRC adoption into all three lines 
• Reduces compliance costs and delivers business value from an integrated GRC platform 
• Configurable workflows to automate GRC processes in minutes 
• Uses REST APIs that integrate GRC processes to third-party connectors 
• Uses IBM Cognos Analytics for self-service data exploration and insights and includes an out-of-the-box Cognos report for the business continuity plan 
• Includes an agile metadata-driven object model and framework that can be altered under the control of the customer 
• Automates your GRC processes, creating time to value 
• Integrates with Watson Assistant to facilitate the creation of a virtual assistant that can assist users in a question-and-answer format. Done by using natural language understanding based on content provided from ingested documents and URLs 
• Integrates with Watson Natural Language Processing to enable suggestions for categorizing or associating records 
• Available deployment options include on-premises, SaaS, or as a cartridge on IBM Cloud Pak for Data that can deploy on-premises and on any cloud 

Why You Need a Business Continuity Management System Like OpenPages 

Business continuity management requires access to data that is constantly changing and spread across the entire organization. IBM OpenPages Business Continuity Management is built to help organizations centralize business continuity management data in one location. In addition, deploy a standardized approach across the enterprise. The OpenPages task-focused user interface and simple workflow designer allow organizations to have a consistent yet flexible business continuity management program. Finally, with a business continuity management system, enterprises can better identify and implement the correct plan at the appropriate time to maintain business continuity in the face of disruptive events 

Why IBM OpenPages With Watson 

IBM OpenPages with Watson transforms the way risk and compliance professionals work. By providing core services and functional components on a scalable platform. The platform covers operational risk, model risk, third-party risk, regulatory compliance, IT governance, business continuity, internal audit, policy, and financial controls management. Essentially, IBM OpenPages with Watson delivers a holistic view of risk and regulatory responsibilities across the enterprise.