Welcome to PwC’s business continuity blog!

We intend to post new blogs every two weeks covering a range of topics and I hope prompting some postings from you offering insights into the world of BCM.  Please feel free to comment and discuss the issues we raise or any other.

As this is our first post, I will start with a few things about BCM at PwC.  It is something that the firm takes seriously, and indeed we remain the largest single certification to the BS25999 standard.  PwC already had a large number of individuals with BCM expertise across the country, and we have been recruiting top specialists to build up a national team to offer stronger advice and services to our clients.

We take a broad view of BCM, which we see covering crisis management, business recovery, supply chain, IT recovery and emergency response.  But we also see it as being part of a wider risk management framework, and believe it is a subject that top management should understand better and become more involved in. 

We see the case for effective BCM demonstrated repeatedly in the media – tube strikes, severe weather, ash clouds, oil spills etc.  So it should not be difficult to catch the attention of boards to think at least about their crisis management capabilities. Yet somehow it remains a challenge for most of us.  I would be interested to hear how people have tried to tackle it and how successful they have been.

We will be at the forthcoming BCI conference today (3rd November) and tomorrow (4th November) where I will be talking further about this issue, and my colleague, Faye Whitmarsh, will also address it as part of her talk about Business Impact Analysis.  We hope to see you at our stand (no 36) or over a coffee then.
Martin Caddick

Comments

[Mark]

I totally buy an argument that BCM is and should be taken seriously by Board. Given what we have seen in BP Oil Spill which i would term as crisis management. But crisis management is integral to BCM or two are different i.e. later focus on forward looking and former focus on "come clean from recent act". I struggle to see the difference, perhaps you could help me.

[Martin Caddick]

I agree that Crisis Management is integral to BCM. I see BCM as an overall framework that covers Emergency/Incident Response, Crisis Management, and Business Recovery.

I think there are two dimensions to each area - planning (forward looking) and response (deal with the real-time situation).

The difference would be that Crisis management deals with the decision making and communication relating to a crisis situation whereas Business Recovery deals with maintaining and restoring key business processes.

I think there is some confusion because BCM is often used to mean the same as Business Recovery. But for me, BCM is wider than just that.