The BCM Challenge: Executive Buy-In

As a Business Continuity Management (BCM) solution provider, the first question I ask potential clients is: What are your major program challenges? Here’s what I hear:

  • We don’t have a seat at the executive table where major decisions are made.
  • The program lacks executive buy-in.
  • BCM is at the bottom of the priorities list for business users (No stakeholder engagement)
  • It is difficult to bring all disciplines (IT, Business, Vendor Management, Executives) under one program

From my experience, getting Executive buy-in is the greatest BCM challenge. The perception that BCM does not add to the ‘bottom line’ is the biggest hurdle to overcome.

A credible BCM program is made up of more than BIAs and BCPS. The integrity of every BCM program requires that foundational data has to be refreshed periodically:

  • HR contact data for keeping ‘call-trees’ up to date,
  • Lists of IT Services that business functions depends on,
  • Critical suppliers & customer lists,
  • Operational sites where services are performed

Cross-domain data needed to sustain the BCM program is a very valuable asset that can be used by executives to make informed decisions both during an operational situation or a disruption.

  • A display of all your operational sites on a map, gives visual impact to your global footprint..
  • An ‘overlay’ on that map of an in-coming storm path, the area of a predicted civil-disorder – or whatever gives executives sleepless nights) facilitates impact assessment.

If Executives could see that  1392 employees are in the impact zone, a potentially critical Customer Support function may be impacted, and a production datacentre is within the cordon, this information would be extremely useful for determining their response strategy.  Current cross-domain data brings visibility and awareness to your BCM program.

Give your executives something they don’t already have: the power of informed decision support.  Do that and your program will take-off; and you may soon be on those Executive’s speed-dial lists.

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Ramesh Warrier

Ramesh Warrier

eBRP Founder and Chief Designer of eBRP Suite, Ramesh is a proponent of constant change, a visionary who believes that the practice of Business Continuity can deliver improved operational efficiency. Ramesh, B.Tech in Electrical Engineering, has nearly 30 years experience in Business & Technology roles. His thoughts are expressed in blogs, white-papers, frequent webcasts and speaking engagements at industry conferences.

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