As preparation for my presentation next week at the NCC Annual Conference on Disaster Recovery (sorry that should read Business Continuity to be thoroughly modern) I’ve been researching what else is being said about the subject on the Web. Surprisingly very little. Nearly every Document Management vendor makes reference to it somewhere but it never really features highly in the compelling reasons to buy.
I find this strange as some of my other research showed some interesting statistics, like 40% of businesses that suffer a disaster fail, approximately 32,000 businesses a year suffered fires, 90% of a business’ ‘knowledge’ is on paper and 50% of businesses agree that losing that paper would be critical to them!
We ourselves are being asked to provide evidence of our Business Continuity Plan on ITTs, especially by local Government and Health Care, and many of our customers are being told by regulatory authorities like the FSA that they MUST have a DM solution for DR purposes. That said there is a British Standard BS25999 (who dreams up these numbers?) ‘Business Continuity Management Standard’ that exists as a guideline for businesses to consider all aspects of BC.
Finally a thought to close on… The Business Continuity Plan is most likely a document, and when do you need it most?
Tim