Best-in-Class Crisis Preparation:Maximize Readiness with the Four T’s

Robert EdsonVice President, Global Sales and Marketing

Business Continuity Readiness Overview

Business Continuity Management (BCM) as a

discipline continues to develop rapidly, but…

Source: CI/KPMG 2013-2014 Benchmark Study

“75% of

companies worldwide are failing in terms of Disaster Readiness”

Source: Disaster Recovery Preparedness Benchmark Survey, 2014

MissionMode Readiness Survey

Average respondent Readiness Score only 58/100!

MissionMode Readiness Survey (cont.)

• 60% of respondents have underdeveloped planning/testing

MissionMode Readiness Survey (cont.)

• Only 20% have detailed templates and collaboration tools in place

Best-in-Class Crisis Preparedness

KPI’s

Team

Templates

Testing

Tools

BCM is Hard. Many programs have yet to reach their goals

• The Four T’s Approach provides a framework for success

• Success multiplies when program linked to specific KPIs

Right Team – Executive Sponsorship

Multiple studies have shown the linkage between

C-Level involvement and BCM Program success

Executive Sponsor Roles

• Select/review BCM team leadership

• Secure funding to support BC/DR initiatives

• Lead steering committee

• Weigh-in on key decisions

• Request/review key metrics

• Create a business continuity

culture

Right Team – BC Team Roles

63% of companies claim between 0-2 of full-time employees

dedicated to BC/DR.

Let’s Explore Three Key Roles:

BCM Director/Lead Functional Leads External Stakeholders

Case Study: Creating a Continuity Culture – Gap, Inc.

Challenge: Building relevancy for a new global

business continuity program in an organization

that had only spotty BC/DR initiatives previously

Keys to Success:

• Clear “Source of Power”

• Short chain of command to executive sponsor

• Company wide visibility

• Foster team-wide relationships/break-down organizational silos

• Technology-driven processes

• Celebrate wins

The Right Templates

What templates are required depends

on the event types you need to

prepare for. Top threats include:

1. Severe Weather

2. IT Issues (outages, breach, virus…)

3. Power Outages

4. Natural disaster (flood, earthquake)

5. Physical Violence

6. Fire

7. Epidemic

8. Product delivery/quality

9. Scandal/reputation

10. Theft

Team ID

• Primary

• Alternates

Risk Assessment

• Situation Monitoring

• Team Activation

Impact Assessment (Go/No Go)

• Impact Assessment

• Go / No Go Decision

Template Creation

Response Planning

• Communications

• Functional Assessment

• Plan Checklists

Recovery

• Communications

• Damage Assessment

• Repair planning

• Vendor Impacts

Metrics Review

• Pre-Event ID

• Decision Speed

• Communication effectiveness

• Recovery speed

Case Study – Xcel EnergyStandardizing Incident Management

Challenge: Poor response record to outages based on

siloed approach to emergency response

Keys to Success:

• Regulatory driven requirement to improve metrics

• Top-down mandate to create standardized approach

• Lead appointed to champion enterprise-wide effort

• Flexible tool selected to pre-populate templates (teams

members, contact preferences, messages, task lists)

• Standard process, customizable by division – flexibility

• System applied to both emergency and routine

operational events

Drills – Practice Makes Perfect

Writing a plan on paper and making

it work in a real emergency are

wildly different. Testing critical for:

• Team training

• Breaking departmental silos

• Validating plan effectiveness

• Testing support tool configuration

How to Run a Successful Test

The Right Tools:Incident Management in the Digital age

Business Continuity has gone virtual for good reasons:

• Redundancy/systems access key in an emergency

• Increasing geographic dispersion of BCM teams

• Simplified information access speeds decision

making

• Affordable, easy to use tools

remove barriers to automation

Key Functionality for BCM Efficiency

Effective

Communications

Simplified Project

Management

• Intelligent Alert system• Escalates alerts across devices• Personalized message delivery• GIS mapping for location-

specific alerts• 2-way messaging with one

touch response• Easily integrates with IT systems• Real-time dashboard for

delivery/receipt

• Virtual Collaboration Platform• Pre-populated templates

• Messages• Task checklists• Document library

• Centralized event dashboard• Operational logs with time

stamping• Intelligent alerting• Rich media sharing• Mobile app

Case Study: Driving Efficiency with better tools - Birmingham Airport

Challenge: Consolidated emergency response teams across the

airport. Needed paperless, centralized system for logging and

managing both routine operational and emergency issues.

Keys to success:

• Ease of use

• Accessible anytime/anywhere

• No need to change current processes – easy start up

• Logged activities are time/date stamped for regulatory compliance

• Centralized dashboard of events allows management to get up to

speed quickly – great for shift changes

• Use system daily – becomes second nature vs. only for crises

Metrics Matter

Most commonly tracked metrics:

• Completion of drills

• Incident response performance

• Completion of objectives

• Awareness generation

• Operational performance

(SLAs)

BCM programs that systematically track and report on key performance indicators reach maturity faster.

Source: Continuity Central Survey

Don’t be a Statistic

• 25% small businesses close each year due to inability to recover from a disaster

• 180 of 350 businesses shut down in the World Trade Center disaster never reopened

Instead…Build BCM Program Maturity with

the Four T’s Approach

Questions?

Thank You!