Nine Reasons to Measure Company Readiness
If you don’t measure your readiness… how will you be able to manage it?
Business continuity programs must be built using a best practices approach to preparedness, disaster management, emergency management and business continuity. This approach should be based on -and aligned with- recognized industry standards and best practices. Utilizing a self-assessment tool that aligns to these standards and best practices provides an objective measurement of an organization’s program and confirms the maturity level of the business continuity planning efforts. Organizations need to know where their current business continuity programs align, and where their programs might have gaps, when compared against industry standards and best practices.
Most corporate disasters and crises can be predicted. Acknowledging these signals and developing plans and infrastructure to manage the events which follow dramatically improves the outcome for all stakeholders. Every organization needs to identify its vulnerabilities – existing and potential – and institute procedures to monitor, plan, mitigate and train for impacts in the event of a crisis. Active participation among all levels and divisions within an organization accomplishes buy-in and support of the overall planning process and facilitates coordination in a crisis.
What value can a self-assessment bring to your organization?
A continuity self-assessment may provide value to your organization in numerous ways.
A self-assessment will:
1) Allow your organization to adopt a business continuity program specific to its needs — quickly, cost-effectively and in alignment with best practices and industry standards. It introduces discipline, holding the organization accountable to focus and participate in a business continuity life cycle planning effort.
2) Discover the gaps in your continuity plan before the damage is done. Program weaknesses and gaps will be highlighted during initial assessments, which can then be built upon to show progress. Every organization needs to identify its vulnerabilities – existing and potential – and institute procedures to monitor, plan, mitigate and train for impacts in the event of a crisis.
3) Diagnose strengths and weaknesses in your plan, and ensure your company has a sound ‘Culture of Preparedness’.
4) Align your program for certification and meet your company’s unique needs. Aligning your program to industry standards and best practices will ensure your company’s ability to respond and recover form disasters and will be a key differentiator among competitors.
5) Establish a consistent basis of evaluation and comparison of your business continuity program to the accepted best practices for business continuity. By measuring to a consistent set of criteria you will be able to chart progress and build a road map for the advancement of your program.
6) Assess the business continuity readiness of your critical vendors across a common set of criteria. This will allow you to quickly identify those vendors that present risk to your company’s business, due to the vendor’s lack of adaptation of a sound ‘Culture of Preparedness’.
7) Evaluate your organization’s progress toward preparedness and benchmark your program against the DHS initiative for PS Prep certification. Through a quantitative assessment process, deficiencies can be measured and improvements tracked, providing an objective view of your current level of preparedness, based on PS Prep recognized standards and industry best practices
8) Quantify for senior management the urgency of action and pinpoints areas of need. The self-assessment is meant to provide the program “owner” with the ability to easily and confidently answer management questions regarding the state of the program.
9) Demonstrate the return on investment of planning. By measuring program advancement you will be able to quantify progress.
Learn more by downloading Why Measure Program Readiness.
“What should we do now?” “What should we say?”