Obtain Acceptance of the Business Continuity Strategy Report

Finalizing Your Business Continuity Strategy & Obtain Acceptance

This section is part of the BL-B-5 Module 3 Pre-reading List.   This is in preparation of the compilation and presentation of Business Continuity (BC) Strategy report to Executive Management.

When you completed the BL-B-3 Module 2, you have the competency of a BU BCM Coordinator as you have completed the BC Strategy Questionnaires. You have also understood the objectives and challenges of completing the BC Strategy Questionnaires at the business unit level.  In Module 3 and 4, you are assuming the role of an Organization BCM Coordinator and is required to analyse and present the BC Strategy findings as a report to Executive Management for approval.

The content is extracted from the BCM Planning Series: Developing Recovery Strategy for Your Business Continuity Plan.

Finalize Strategy

Develop the BC Strategy Report

This is the final step of the BC Strategy process.  By this stage, you will be very familiar with the overall operations of the organization.

However, you should bear in mind that others who read your report may not have the benefit of such experience or knowledge. This is especially true for those reading it for the first time since the start of the BC Strategy phase.

Keep these steps in mind when you are developing your final report:

• Issue a draft report to participating business unit managers and request their feedback
• Review the feedback
• Revise the findings or add to outstanding issues
• Schedule a workshop or meeting with participating business unit managers to discuss initial findings, if necessary
• Update original findings to reflect changes arising from meetings
• Prepare the final recovery strategy report according to organizational standards
• Make a formal presentation of the findings to Executive Management

Rationalization and Critique of Report

I always recommend that a draft BC Strategy report be submitted to the Organization BCM Coordinator, which usually consists of business unit representatives and the project sponsor, for their comments and ratification.

There is nearly always a need for someone to critique and rationalize the business unit’s content. As an example, the procurement unit may insist on recovery to fifty per cent of their staff member strength within three days but the Executive Management may well feel differently.

As the Organization BCM Coordinator, you can suggest that the requirement seems unrealistic; but if the BU BCM Coordinator or even their Head of BU insists, you have to include their input, hence the importance of rationalization.

Prepare the BC Strategy Report

The report should include background information to bring all parties towards a common understanding. This report must be clearly written so that it does not attract unnecessary and irrelevant questions.

The report may be structured as follows:

• Why was the BC Strategy conducted?
• What were the objectives set?
• What was the scope of the exercise?
• What was the approach used?
• What are the required resources?
• What were the detailed findings?
• What were the conclusions?
• What were the strengths and weaknesses?
• What are the recommendations to Executive Management?

If you follow this methodology you will undoubtedly produce a lengthy and detailed report, particularly if you include graphs, tables and diagrams. However, very few people need to read the report in its entirety.

You should have an executive summary for management containing the introduction, conclusions and major recommendations. There should also be individual sections for business unit managers and proposals for staff in quality assurance and for those responsible for business continuity.

It is important to make sure that the BC Strategy report is a complete document that is sufficiently detailed, it is sensitive to the passage of time, and it highlights the following:

• What is the recovery strategy?
• Where is the most important impact of an incident?
• What is the current level of preparedness?
• What improvement must be made to the working practices during a normal situation and during an emergency?

Obtain Management Approval

Since this program is a top bottom approach, it is vital to manage the Executive Management’s expectations. The report then needs to describe:

• What is the key problem?
• What is the current state with respect to the solution?
• What is required from them?

The Executive Management members themselves often do not realize that only they can authorize the use of resources for the BCM planning process. The Executive Management will therefore need to know:

• What is required?
• Why is it required?
• When is it required?
• How much will it cost?

I recommend as a guide that your BC Strategy report be around three to four pages in length. The detailed summary of the recovery strategies should be appended to the report. The total length of the report would typically be around twenty pages.

The Executive Management members are likely to read only the executive summary which should include a concise set of recommendations and, if appropriate, a cost implementation plan.

A sample report can be found in BC Strategy Report.

Content of Presentation

The presentation to Executive Management should not exceed twenty minutes, if possible. The goals of the presentation are:

• Provide information about the impact of disruption to the organization
• Obtain acceptance of the findings of the recovery strategy report
• Seek approval on the direction of plan development implementation
• Build a case for developing a business continuity management program

Presentation to Management

The management presentation should focus on the overall recovery strategy for all the critical business functions. The results of the analysis should be presented in a table or a graph. The methodology used, sources of the information, and textual explanations of the results should be presented in a concise format.

After the results are presented, the BCP Project Manager should state the priorities assigned to business units. At the conclusion of the management presentation, the BCP Project Manager should explain how the recovery strategy results would be used to implement the strategies and infrastructural enhancement.

Approval of Report

The final step of documenting the decision by the Executive Management is often missing. The BCP Project Manager should extract the “minutes of meeting” and file the recorded minutes highlighting the recovery strategy approval. This document is often reviewed by internal and external auditors.

Proceed to Next Step

In order to proceed to the next process which is the plan development phase, you may need to read the next book “Implementing Your Business Continuity Plan.”