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by Scott W. Ream
“What gets measured gets done.” Successful BC programs achieve sustained executive sponsorship, resource commitment and management participation in part because they can articulate where they are today and where they are going tomorrow.
With the advent of several new and enhanced standards, many organizations are seeking certification. Prior to incurring the costs and time demands of the certification process, it is important to understand your BC program’s current state and strengthen it where appropriate.
Since 2003, numerous organizations have utilized Virtual Corporation’s globally recognized Business Continuity Maturity Model® (BCMM®) as a valued metrics tool. This no-cost BC program assessment aid is available at www.virtual-corp.net. The goals of the BCMM® are to:
- Provide a diagnostic tool for objective evaluation of BC program effectiveness
- Generate consistent data from which meaningful benchmark analyses can be drawn
- Answer key questions for senior management regarding BC program deployment:
- Where are we now?
- What is the target we are
shooting for?
- What evolutionary path do we follow to get there?
The BCMM® defines over 270 BC program criteria and performance requirements across six maturity levels within eight Corporate Competencies. The model also describes performing a “self-assessment” to quantify the current state of your BC program, conduct a self-documenting gap analysis and formulate immediate and long term program recommendations.
The below chart summarizes the order in which the Corporate Competencies typically progress within an organization, i.e. “Very Low”, ”Low”, “Medium”, and “High” performance.
In addition to the included BCMM® self-assessment approach, Virtual Corporation provides the following professional assessment services:
BCMM® Assessment – Performed by a trained, licensed BCMM® Assessor utilizing a standardized approach and software to produce a scorecard, findings and recommendations report plus an executive presentation.
BCMM® Self-Assessment Workshop –
1-day workshop with your BC subject-matter experts utilizing Sustainable Planner™, Virtual’s innovative BC planning tool, to automate scorecard and self-documenting gap report.
More than 4,000 BC professionals in over 40 countries have downloaded the BCMM® and Virtual oversees an active Community of Interest. A newly formed international team of BCMM® assessors continues to provide enhancements including mapping to leading BC standards such as NFPA 1600 and BS 25999.
Since 1994 Virtual Corporation has been delivering innovative, sustainable business continuity consulting and software solutions. Our approach is to deploy business continuity across an organization as a standardized process, “just like budgeting”. Empowering managers to own their own plans enables your BC professionals to consult with the business rather than be consumed by plan administration.
Sustainable Planner™ was designed to support this “distributed” philosophy through highly adaptive and customizable BC planning and activation templates. Through an intuitive user interface Sustainable Planner™ seamlessly combines data and documents from across an organization to provide multiple plans and report types including BIAs and the BCMM® self-assessment.
About the Author
Scott Ream is the president and co-founder of Virtual Corporation, principal author of the BCMM®, a founding member of the International Continuity Oversight Board and a principal member to the U.S. TAG to TC223, Societal Security. For more information, please go to:
www.virtual-corp.net or contact Virtual Corporation at (973) 426-1444.
Virtual Corp.
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