By Michael J. Sutherland

In today's streamlined just-in-time production and global service environment, business continuity and disaster recovery planning must encompass process flows, production interdependencies, and special hazards as well as your enterprise's enabling technologies to avoid potentially disastrous, business-crippling consequences.

Business Continuity management is the responsibility of the company’s executive officers.  All too often this translates into a global mandate that all locations have a business continuity plan.  As the person who must coordinate all of these plans, how can you be certain that they have been completed, that they address the appropriate issues, and that they are maintained and kept up to date?

Though working to adequately protect and plan for the recovery of your IT assets may certainly present a challenge to your organization, IT resources may also deliver great solutions. The Internet offers solid opportunities relevant to your business continuity planning efforts. 

Your operations span the globe…shouldn’t your planning tools?  By using the Internet to feed a global Business Impact Analysis, you can develop the strategic information to set priorities, and with drill down capabilities, you will have the specifics to substantiate your argument.

When a disaster occurs, you may have difficulty coordinating local actions that echo a consistent, external corporate message if each component of your organization has a different (or no) game plan. But this situation can be eased greatly if one copy – the most current one – of your critical documentation is securely hosted on a third party extranet, and accessible by all associates who need to see it.  This would allow a manager whose facility experiences a loss halfway across the globe, to pull up the plant diagram, process flow chart, or business continuity plan and make recovery decisions with confidence.  And since "corporate" also has the ability to access the identical information, they can become an aid to recovery instead of an impediment. Web-based information management lets you access the information you need securely, globally, and in real-time. 

Data management and analysis is where the real power of the Internet can support your business continuity management efforts. By leveraging emerging technologies, you can bring together data from across your enterprise and offer graphic analyses equipped with drill down capability.  The result?  You get a holistic view, whereby you can quickly identify major vulnerabilities, their impacts, and alternative strategies. From the enterprise view you can drill down to the details, enabling informed decisions and establishing priorities accordingly.

Here are some filter questions to ask when determining information’s electronic value add:

Is the information itself timely? Is the process for posting the information to the Web timely? Is the security of information uncompromised?  Is the on-line information readily accessible? Is there an automated workflow management process? Are users notified when new information is posted? Is information well organized and easily located?  Is the information actionable?

Digitization can be a valuable tool in helping you manage and mitigate risk.  Whether you're managing documents or analyzing data, emerging Internet risk management and business continuity tools can enhance your decision-making abilities. Global, one-click access to critical information can increase manager productivity, free up time for valuable information analysis activities, and help make vital determinations of where to focus business continuity resources.

About the Author
Michael J. Sutherland is a member of the IRI e-Business team and is the organization's Web content leader. You may reach him by phoning 860.520.6107 but he'd much prefer to e-Connect with you at Michael.Sutherland@industrialrisk.com