The Optimal Business Continuity Strategy for an Entity is Determined by the

Disaster Lifecycle

Before starting to develop the BC strategy, it is important to understand the overview of a typical disaster lifecycle.

Lifecycle of a Disaster

There are some basic questions that you will need to ask for each phase of the lifecycle.

Reduce (or Prevent)

• Have all threats been identified and their effects minimized?
• Have the appropriate countermeasures been implemented?
• Have all pre-disaster preventive measures been taken?

Respond

• What should the team do while waiting either for the situation to be assessed or for the decision to activate the plan?
• What is the immediate emergency response that has been considered?

Recover

• What steps or alternative processing procedures may be taken to work around the problem until it is fixed?
• What are the immediate actions to be taken for time-sensitive business functions?

Resume

• How are the critical business functions going to be operated at another location?
• How are contracted equipment and third party resources to be acquired?

Restore

• What must the team do if operations must stop because continuing the operations may corrupt or destroy future work or processes?
• What are the methods to be used to process or catch up on work that has been deferred?

Return

• How to stop the recovery operations and resume normal business?

How to Develop Business Continuity Strategy?

The BC strategy building block includes the formulation, selection and implementation of methods to reduce the impact of a disaster and to respond to incidents.
To achieve the goals and objectives of the organization, the strategies to be developed must support each subsequent phase of the disaster lifecycle, namely, response, recovery, resumption, restoration and return (home).

Each strategy must:

• Be attainable
• Have a high probability of success
• Be verifiable via exercises
• Support timely response and resumption activities
• Meet recovery service objectives
• Be cost-effective

BC strategy is based on the result of the BIA, which is generally done to qualify and quantify exposures to the organization's operation. Appropriate recovery strategies can then be formulated for the resumption of critical functions identified as having significant impacts on the organization.

For any given plan, multiple strategies may be developed to address variations, including:

• Probable duration or type of outage
• The business cycle in which the disaster occurs
• Availability of resources

For example, the BC strategy to resume operations from an outage during a peak production period may call for the use of a hot standby facility. An alternative strategy for the same facility or business operation in times of lower production demand could be to sub-contract or out-source the production.

Depending on the scope of the plan, recovery strategy development can be a complex process of defining and analyzing alternative ways of doing business. There is a need to:

• Research and select alternative technology, processes and skillsets
• Evaluate the success and failures of other organizations using similar approaches
• Determine which alternate site providers can provide the most comprehensive service and the acceptable level of coverage for the implementation of the selected strategies
• Select a strategy that provides an acceptable level of service and cost-benefit

It is important to remember that strategies may differ even for organizations within the same industry.

Depending on the cost and exposure of the recovery strategy, it may be necessary to even adopt a temporary recovery strategy to address a portion of the organization's recovery needs until issues such as funding and system re-engineering are resolved.

Required Knowledge

The development of the recovery strategy becomes less difficult as a BCP Project Manager gains experience. During the initial learning period, a BCP Project Manager could learn from seasoned business continuity professionals to ensure that the BC strategy developed is indeed viable.

The BCP Project Manager must have a solid knowledge of viable options and alternatives in the areas of crisis management, alternate site selection and telecommunications. Knowledge of data processing and vital records retention will also prove extremely useful in developing the BC strategies.

Objectives of BC Strategy Phase

The objectives of the BC strategy phase are to:

• Establish business functions and job priorities vis-à-vis business needs
• Determine processing requirements for priority business functions
• Identify and formalize backup for everything needed to survive a disaster
• Ensure that alternative processing procedure is available for continuity of critical business needs whilst recovery is in progress

Tasks

The tasks to complete this recovery strategy phase include:

• Analyze all business functions and prioritize them based on business needs
• Analyze critical resources required to run high priority business functions so that sufficient backup can be arranged
• Review and establish backup arrangements, if necessary
• Identify necessary interim processing procedures for critical business functions
• Seek management's review and endorsement of findings and recommendations

What Does BC Strategy (BCS) Development Entail?

The entire BC strategy process involves the following stages:

Stage 1: Initiate BCS Project and Design

• Understand the development process for BC strategy
• Evaluate current status and arrangement
• Prepare project plan

Stage 2: Develop and Consolidate Strategy

• Design working document
• Conduct workshop
• Design and develop BC strategy
• Review and consolidate submissions from business units

Stage 3: Finalize BC Strategy & Obtain Acceptance

• Validate design
• Finalize strategy
• Obtain management approval

The next step or block of activities in the BCM Planning Process is Plan Development. For details on Plan Development, please refer to the next book entitled, "Implementing Your Business Continuity Plan".

Expected Deliverables

The expected deliverables at each stage of a typical Recovery Strategy phase are based on developing:

• Strategic plans for recovering prioritized business functions
• Critical business functions requiring interim manual processing procedures
• Alternative interim processing procedures

Reference

Goh, M. H. (2021). Developing Business Continuity Strategy for Your Business Continuity Plan. Business Continuity Management Planning Series (3rd ed.). Singapore: GMH Pte Ltd.

Extracted from "Chapter 2: What is Recovery Strategy?"

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