BCM World Conference and Exhibition – why this is the ‘must attend’ event for BCM practitioners

Deborah Higgins MBCI

Life as a BCM practitioner in any organisation can sometimes feel lonely and like an uphill struggle, a never-ending battle with no imminent victory in sight. 

We need to be a ‘jack of all trades’ starting from knowing how to make BCM relevant and of interest to all areas of the organisation, to being a master of persuasion to convince sceptical stakeholders, to having to have an eye for detail to carry out an effective BIA as well as being highly organised to maintain the BC Plan and be skilled facilitators to run our exercises!

The constant battle as we BC practitioners strive to embed BCM into our organisation’s culture is taxing to say the least and just when we feel like giving up as our energy levels ebb into the distance, along comes the BCM World Conference to revitalise the parts other events cannot reach and to fill us with inspiration and renewed enthusiasm for our one true ‘professional’ passion.

BCM World Conference is the place where  we can be with our allies, where we stand together with the ‘already convinced’ and the ‘converted’, where we are part of a global, united force and where we can find temporary release  from our ivory towers

For me the Conference is a place I go to immerse myself in the world of BCM. As a delegate I can find out what’s new, what other practitioners from a wide range of organisations are doing and how are they doing it. I can listen to professionals from all over the world talk about common problems we all face and become part of the conversation about what we can do about it. I can learn from the wealth of experience and knowledge from experienced leaders in their fields, share my own experience and best of all I can take this away with me back to my place of work.

I can find out what tools are out there to help me do my job by visiting the exhibition. I can see anything from software providers, salvage companies and consultants all who know exactly what I do and why I am there. I have listened to some fascinating stories in presentations given on the exhibition floor. I have been inspired to attend workshops and training courses and I can find out how to continue with my professional development.

I have been fortunate to be in a position to go to BCM World and take the opportunity to learn, to network and make new friends and I can’t imagine not attending the conference in the future.

This year I am lucky enough to work for the Business Continuity Institute and so I don’t need to make a business case to my employers to fund my attendance! But I do know that there is no better place for anyone with any interest in Business Continuity to be.

If, like me, you leave with a renewed feeling of enthusiasm for your work and full of useful knowledge and some new ideas to try back in the office, then it has been a worthwhile investment and one you will continue to reap the benefits of for a very long time.        

And if you are looking to save a bit of money, the BCI are offering an Early Bird Rate for both Members and Non-Members, which is available until 31^st July 2012.  So hurry and take advantage of this by booking your place right now here   

To find out more about the Conference click here or download the Conference Programme here

Look forward to seeing you there.

Deborah Higgins, MBCI

Technical & Learning Manager at the BCI

The Revival of IT Disaster Recovery as a BCM Core Issue

Lyndon Bird FBCI

The one thing that almost all Business Continuity professionals agree upon is that BCM originated in IT Disaster Recovery (ITDR). Until very recently I would have argued that ITDR was no longer a core issue of BC practitioners in multi-national or global organizations. Although the risks of IT failure were extensive and the potential impact massive, the probability of those risks being manifest was very much under control. The sheer expenditure and sophistication of ICT in major organizations should have designed resilience into the infra-structure so that IT failures were largely invisible to customers and other external stakeholders.

My first reaction to hearing that the Royal Bank of Scotland had serious IT problems with a software upgrade was one of disbelief. Surely not I told my colleagues, there has to be more to it than this, perhaps a cyber-attack or perhaps internal sabotage. When no rumours of such dramatic events emerged and the banking group kept extending their expected recovery period I had to reluctantly admit I was wrong. As I write, the banking group are still not totally operational at their Ulster Bank subsidiary after 4 weeks of disruption, and even customers at the bank’s main brands (RBS and NatWest) experienced delays of a week or more.

The Business Continuity Institute (BCI) launches Global Awards 2012







BCI Global Awards 2011

The Business Continuity Institute has launched its 2012 Global Awards.  The Awards recognise the outstanding achievements of business continuity professionals working worldwide and celebrate the top talent in this rising industry. 

This year sees the launch of two new judged categories - BCM Newcomer of the Year and Business Continuity Team of the Year - as well as the addition of Business Continuity Personality of the Year, which is decided by public vote. 

An independent judging panel presides over the Awards entries.   Eight judges representing the education, private and public sectors in Australia, India, South Africa, USA and the UK, including the Houses of Parliament make up the panel and ensure a truly cross-sector and global evaluation.

The Awards will be presented at the BCI Gala Dinner and Awards that completes day one of the BCM World Conference and Exhibition 2012 that takes place 7^th to 8^th November 2012 at Olympia, London. 

This year the Gala Dinner is being hosted at one of London’s top tourist attractions, Madame Tussauds, home to stars past and present, providing a fitting setting for a BCM star-studded event.

The BCI Global Awards are open to everyone working in the business continuity industry.

The deadline for entries is Friday, 7^th September 2012. 

Visit BCI Global Awards 2012 to find out more.

Business Continuity - getting buy-in at the top

Lyndon Bird FBCI

It is difficult to get buy-in at the very top in organizations because BCM is wrongly seen as an operational matter. In a booming economy it is easy to think that sufficient resources are available to deal with any adverse incident that might occur. However, in these more challenging times, there is less confidence in the ability of an organization’s capability to simply “buy itself out of trouble”.

Many strategic decisions are taken without full consideration of the consequence of interruption such as, the growth of outsourcing, off-shoring, long supply chains and low cost manufacturing. Whilst generally adding short-term value to the bottom-line, when any of these strategies fail to deliver, reputation and brand image are compromised. Short-term financial losses might be containable but long-term loss of market share is often much more damaging.

So getting buy in at the top requires a Business Continuity professional to have better understanding of the concerns of Top Management and an ability to communicate any risk concerns in a language they are familiar with. Real high-profile examples help grow awareness and promote management attention but only if the business consequences of a disruptive event are emphasised, not the technical failures that caused it. Many leaders were shaken by the corporate impact that the Gulf of Mexico oil spill incident had on the finances, share-price and reputation of BP, a truly global business. Business Continuity Managers can benefit themselves and their organizations by using their skills to identify their own organization’s potential high consequence events.

When controls fail, will [risk] culture save your organisation?

Lee Glendon CBCI

The Institute of Risk Management is taking a brave step into an uncertain and very fuzzy area – understanding and influencing risk culture.   A six month project bringing together experts in organisational behaviour, culture and sociology presented a progress report last week to an audience of risk practitioners and stakeholders including the BCI.

The rationale for the project, which intends to publish a paper this October, is quite simple:  a successful Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) programme requires at least an understanding of an organisation’s risk culture, and ideally the tools to influence it.

The authors recognise this paper is not likely to be the last word on risk culture.  But it’s a coherent and valuable body of work, which is very much focused on practical guidance and not just theory. 

The objective of the project is to provide practitioners with insight and tools to do one or more of the following:

1)      Understand the existing risk culture and make risk management work as best as possible within this culture

2)      Change the risk culture

3)      Determine what kind of risk culture would make the organisation more successful

Culture is being defined as the values, beliefs, ethos, knowledge and understanding shared by a group of people with a common purpose.  Risk culture is seen as a subset of a “generic” culture.

The project is considering a number of diagnostic tools to help understand risk culture.   One essential tool, appropriately named the ABC model, asserts that while [risk] culture is hard to change in itself, if you understand that behaviour drives [risk] culture and attitudes in turn drive behaviour then you can start to understand, influence and control attitudes, with beneficial outcomes in [risk] culture.

One contributor made the contrast between the ethics of care and the ethics of obedience, which essentially showed that people care less at work than at home because of the need for obedience while at work.  To illustrate this point, an example was given of a large organisation that had 34,000 rules (imagine the poor folk who had the job of counting them!).

A rather liberating perspective was expressed when one person noted that risk management won’t avoid another banking system failure by creating more processes or building controls for the last crisis, instead resilience would be achieved through an effective risk culture.  When controls fail, you will be reliant on the risk culture of your organisation.

Naturally, as with modern risk thinking, there is an upside and downside perspective to risk culture.  Practitioners need to ask whether culture stops the organisation from doing things better.  For example, one test of culture is how long it takes to do something in an organisation compared with the need or requirement.  It was suggested that an understanding of the social activities (culture) is needed alongside a good technical competency in order for a project to be successful.

In summary, the work from the IRM is going to be a very useful input to our own work on organisational resilience and the role of culture in achieving it.  The paper from the IRM will be out for consultation between 20^th July and 10^th August – and BCI members are invited to respond (look out for notices in the BCI eBulletin).  The final paper is expected to be published in October 2012.