Continuity Coach
Business Continuity & Cyber Security Consultancy Customised for SME organisations
Business continuity can be a real challenge for many organisations: deadlines can be demanding, customer and third party expectations are often high and risk assessment questionnaires from large corporates can be daunting - particularly when resources (both human and financial) are tight. We'll help you to meet those challenges - without breaking the bank.
Continuity Coach
The Continuity Coach service provides a practical delivery approach for business continuity plan development and deployment specifically designed for the needs of SME organisations. Continuity Coach delivers business continuity for your organisations that is:
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Relevant to your needs and cost effective;
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Gives your customers a warm feeling that you won't let them down if something disrupts your operations
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Will stand up to any audit or third party evaluation
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Is demonstrably compliant with accepted standards
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Leaves your organisation with the skills and knowledge to take over business continuity management
Our service is delivered using trusted and proven process including our business continuity plan toolkit and support . This option works well for organisations that are looking for structured delivery and support of their business continuity plan development - but who don't want to commit to a full-time consultant on the project.
How does Continuity Coach Work?
The Continuity Coach service provides cost effective, high quality business continuity and incident management development services to SME organisations. It combines skills development, a business continuity plan development toolkit and advisory services, that enables organisations to "learn by doing" with a structured toolkit supported by expert advice throughout business continuity plan development. This approach significantly reduces the costs of traditional "day-rate" consultancy without compromising quality. Our delivery process is summarised below:
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To avoid any unnecessary re-work, we conduct a short review of any plans and risk assessments already in place to determine if any of this previous work can be re-used.
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We then deliver an introductory workshop for all participants in the project to introduce the process and, most important, set scope, priorities, current capabilities and outcomes. We have found it most effective to deliver the workshop in person at the client site.
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At the commencement each stage of the roadmap, a “kick-off” meeting is held to introduce development considerations and any relevant tools within the toolkit to assist with completion.
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An end of stage meeting with each participant to walkthrough the outcome of their work, on request.
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On completion of overall plan development, we conduct a facilitated plan walkthrough to evaluate plans under a range of incident scenarios.
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The final stage of development is the development of a business continuity management framework (often referred to as “the BCMS” – the business continuity management system) which supports the ongoing maintenance of the business continuity plan. This is a narrative style document, produced primarily for third party review, which describes the operation of the organisations BCMS. The content of this document is designed to demonstrate that “due process” was followed in development and maintenance of the BC Plan. It is also cross-referenced to the ISO 22301 standard to confirm that all aspects of business continuity are compliant with the relevant clauses of the standard and, by default, with the majority of recognised business continuity frameworks
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Following delivery of the plan, we provide the option of a facilitated walkthrough of the plan
What does "Designed For the needs of smB organisations" mean?
In a nutshell it means that we know that SME organisations don’t have the luxury of a large “corporate function” that will be dedicated to issues like business continuity. We recognise that in SME organisations, the people involved in the development and management of business continuity also have day jobs!!
So instead of the usual menu offering studies, reports and mountains of documents served with a topping of specialist jargon – we aim to keep it straightforward and maintainable and above all, relevant to the organisations we work with.
So instead of studies, focus groups etc. etc. we steer you through the process of business continuity plan development by leveraging your understanding of your markets, your customers and the way your organisation operates. Using our tried and proven business continuity roadmap we mentor you through each stage, developing your business continuity knowledge and skills as we go - which significantly accelerates the development process and leaves you with the knowledge, skills and processes to manage business continuity.
Why does Continuity Coach Work So well?
Because you know how your organisation works and we know the trip-wires, tarpits and rabbit holes that can undermine and bog-down the development and deployment of business continuity initiatives. Your knowledge and our experience leverages the efforts of everyone involved. It also has the benefit of being far more cost effective than engaging a team of consultants on a day-rate basis.
Coaching your colleagues to develop business continuity plans and capabilities delivers the “best of both worlds”:
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Your organisation learns business continuity by doing it
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The coaching approach provides a safety net that ensures that the business continuity plan development stays on track
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We can show the “tips and tricks of the trade” 9rather than the "text-book" approaches that help to accelerate business continuity plan development as well as giving that all important guidance that will enable you to provide customers and third parties the confidence that your organisation has developed a solid, reliable BCP that complies with accepted standards.
what does business continuity "best practice" really mean?
When clients contact us to discuss their needs they often mention achieving "best practice" as one of their objectives. So what is "best practice" in the context of business continuity?. For starters, best practice is NOT slavishly following the dictates of a particular standard or framework when it's clearly written for an organisations 10 times (or more) your size of YOUR organisation. For us best practice is:
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Developing a business continuity plan that creates the capability for your business to recover from operational shocks
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Customers and stakeholders are confident that they can rely on you when things go wrong
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The development and maintenance process does not create a self-serving, bureaucratic, box-ticking overhead
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Third parties and auditors can clearly see that your business continuity arrangements are based on sound, proven principles that are effectively protecting your organisation.
RiskCentric | Business Continuity Specialists | Cambridge, United Kingdom | Contact us