Business Continuity Planning: A New Road to Nurture Business Growth

摘要

Disasters never ring a bell before its arrival; it just arrives and destroys everything that comes in its way. Whether it is natural (Earthquakes, Cyclone) or manmade (System Failures), it doesn't matter. In such cases, it is an essential requirement for those organizations, interested in safeguarding their data and operations, to pay extra attention to have a Business Continuity Plan in place. In current perspective, where probability of both types of disasters are same whether it is natural or manmade (e.g. floods and 9/11 attack), the necessity for implementing a business continuity plan is increasing day-by-day. The inauspicious event like 9/11 gives a wakeup call to global business community to get prepared for any such disaster. At present different organizations are implementing Disaster Recovery Plans and Business Continuity Plans for their smooth and uninterrupted services in case of such types of disasters. There are different major sectors operating globally -Banking, FSI (Financial services and insurance), TMT (Technology, Media and Telecommunications), Manufacturing and Others (includes Educational Institutions, Non-Government Organizations, Research Institutes etc). These sectors contribute to a major part to the global economy. This paper basically focuses on issues regarding BCP in these sectors and establishing a relation between BCP and Basel II by highlighting some of the aspects of BCP which are covered in Basel II. The paper also discusses the need for BCM and presents a model to design, implement, operationalise and asses a Business Continuity Plan along with its Outsourcing Issues. It also provides a comparative analysis of existing and proposed model for implementing Business Continuity Planning in organizations. A methodology for effective Business Continuity Management is developed.