“There is no discipline in the world so severe as the discipline of experience subjected to the tests of intelligent development and direction.”

John Dewey (1859 - 1952)

Organizations need to assess the needs of their business operations to function when access to facilities, phone, utilities, staff, IT services and/or other supplies is interrupted.

Many service interruptions are not, in themselves, disasters. But they can needlessly grow into disasters if there is a lack of coordination and management. The source of the problem can be external, from IT, within the business operations, or a combination. But if no one has overall responsibility to coordinate and organize a measured response, the result will be chaotic.

Will there just be a scramble to recover operations, leaving staff sitting idle, and customers and the public without services?

Business Continuity Planning is a plan to recover business operations after critical services have been stopped.  While a Disaster Recovery Plan is to recover IT operations after an “IT Disaster”.  

These programs are reactive planning for “worst case” scenarios.  Traditional thinking is that these programs will recover from any event that is less than “worst case”.  Actual experience and post-event analysis has proven otherwise.

The most frequent events are not “worst case” events. Instead, they cause interruptions to business services and have a negative impact.  But they are not handled by most BCP and DRP planning approaches. 

In addition, to invoke the BCP or the DRP is a difficult decision.  Given the impact in terms of cost and the disruption to other operations, valuable recovery time is lost deciding what to do.  This delay can increase the negative impact of the event.  This can mean significant revenue loss, impact to customers, clients, suppliers, staff and the public as well as damage to image or reputation, bankruptcy, and in worst cases, exposure to liabilities.

Since recovery from IT interruptions is the responsibility of IT, a common assumption is that there is nothing that the business can do until “the screens light up again”. Consequently, not enough effort is made to focus on maintaining business operations, a responsibility that cannot be performed by IT.

A Service Continuity Management (SCM) program will reduce the impact (cost) of an interruption. facilitates interim operations and speeds the return to normal operation. 

A damaged reputation can be expensive to the business and public loss of confidence in your services can be even more damaging. Rebuliding company's reputation can be expensive in time and money. Few organizations are ready or prepared when the interruption occurs. More than the recovery of the operation; it is the recovery of the business.

An SCM program provides a reasoned response to all severities of interruptions which insures that if the “worst case” does occur, reaction and response will be better managed and the impact reduced.

Compliance and audit standards (e.g. SOX, CoBIT, ISO, Bill 198) requires that the ability to survive risks that threaten the organization’s survival are planned, practiced and continually tested.

NegenIT’s Service Continuity Management process is designed is manage and recover from problems and issues from anything less than a total disaster.   Using industry “Best Practices” NegenIT works with you to clearly understand your business process and operations.  We set out to and develop the process, procedures and polices to mitigate, manage and recover from business “any” problem.  It’s all about profitability.  We implement the plan so the benefits will be realized.     

NegenIT Program includes:

• Event Detection
• Scope Determination
• Impact Assessment
• Event Limitation
• Escalation Procedures
• Recovery Coordination
• Recovery Resource Mobilization
• Communication
  
• Project Management
  
• Plan Maintenance
• Plan Testing and Validation
• Post Event Review

The result is a continuous improvement process that improves the response and recovery from all service interruptions.

NegenIT SCM gives your organization confidence and assurance that your operations will continue during service interruptions.  

SCM will:

• Maintain critical business functions to support customer contact and ensure sales orders and services can be fulfilled;
• Develop different response levels for each type of service interruption
• Eliminate time wasting and duplication of effort in the recovery process
• Ensure all IT and business changes are reflected in the recovery plans
• Provide a comprehensive method for identifying and assessing risks to the IT environment
• Identify risk mitigations
  

NegenIT SCM is a competitive advantage for your organization, because it assures your customers that the services you provide will not be interrupted. 

To learn more - contact us

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