Frequently Asked Questions about BCP We are often asked the questions that we've answered below. If you don't see your question here, please send us your question at chris.tan@calamity.com.sg and we’ll answer it for you.
What are other companies doing about BCP? Many large companies have disaster recovery plans for their IT systems and their data networks. Some companies – banks, for example, and Western multinational companies - have extensive plans and recovery facilities. But many companies in Asia, in our experience, do not have business continuity plans for the people, processes and practices that make a company run. You can read what other companies in Asia have done about BCP in our 2005 paper titled “10 Years of BCP in Asia”. Click here to request a link to a free copy of that paper. Many people want to know, “What are my competitors doing?” We make an effort to keep track of the status of BCP at many companies and to have professional contacts at those companies. Send us the name of the company you’re interested in, and we’ll see what we can tell you or what we can find out. How much does it cost to prepare a BCP? We assume a rate of one thousand fifty (SGD 1,250) Singapore dollars per BCP professional per day. That’s about EUR 540.00 per day, or about USD 650 per day. For currency conversation rates into your currency, click www.xe.com We calculate the cost of a project by estimating the number of days to complete the work. Our rule-of-thumb calculations are pretty simple:
Of course, what constitutes a “department” is different at each company, so the cost for your project may vary. The amount of documentation you need will also affect the cost: the more you want, the longer it takes to write and the more it costs. To calculate costs yourself using this estimating methodology, you may use our BCP Quick Estimator spreadsheet. Like any professional service, the cost increases or decreases by the amount of work required to complete your plan. Do you want a thorough risk analysis of your building, or do you just want to assume a denial-of-access scenario? Do you want one-on-one interviews with each department (time-consuming), or do you want employees to complete written questionnaires (faster for us, more work for them)? These decisions determine the time, and therefore the cost, of preparing a BCP, whether you do it yourself or engage professional planners like us. If your BCP budget hasn’t yet been approved, we can help you decide what you can accomplish with whatever budget you can get. You can accomplish something for a small amount, especially if you spend it on one of our training courses. You can even start your BCP for no expense at all: get some ideas from our very popular “Before Your BCP” & paper that lists 14 things you can do to start your BCP for little or no cost. What other costs are there for a BCP? The cost estimates in the previous answer are for consulting assistance to help you prepare, exercise or update your BCP. There will be other costs in addition to consulting costs. Your company will incur costs to build or rent recovery facilities, to acquire backup computer equipment, to store documents off-site or to re-route phone lines, for example. We advise clients with short Recovery Time Objectives (one day or less) that they must have access to a nearby recovery facility in order to achieve their recovery objectives. That facility may be another office of your company, or it may be a commercial recovery facility. Other costs might include having backup tapes taken away from your building every day, or scanning paper records onto disk. These and other costs of doing or implementing what your BCP requires are not included in our estimates. How long will it take to prepare a BCP? Six (6) months to one (1) year, in our experience. We have never completed a BCP for a company in fewer than six (6) months, and some have taken longer than a year. The length of time depends on how much time your colleagues are willing to spend on BCP when you’re developing it. Of course, the number of employees in your company also makes a big difference. The smaller the company, the sooner the process can be completed. Gathering a company's recovery requirements (Minimum Operating Requirements, Recovery Time Objectives and Recovery Point Objective) can be done in as little as three (3) hours, using a group interview with senior executives, led by an experienced BCP professional from Forbes Calamity Prevention. The process is quick, but the result won't be very detailed. Gathering detailed operating and recovery requirements in writing from many departments will take weeks - because it can only be done with questionnaires or interviews. How much time employees will spend on the questionnaires, of course, depends on the commitment of their managers to the BCP process. Equipping a recovery site, after the requirements are determined, usually takes weeks or months. How much detail should be in our BCP? Only as much as you need to achieve your recovery objectives. More detail in a BCP is good before a disaster because it indicates a lot of thought has gone into preparing the BCP. More detail isn’t as useful in a disaster: people must know what to do without having to read a long document. In fact, you may be able to carry the important parts of your company’s BCP on a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) or in a mobile phone. The current trend is to include fewer details in a BCP, and to concentrate on simple lists of the tasks to be done, strategies and recovery objectives - assuming that knowledgeable employees will know the specific steps when the BCP is activated. That approach can work if the recovery teams participate regularly - two times each year - in rehearsals which lead to gradual improvements in their BCP’s. Who and where is Forbes Calamity Prevention (FCP)? Since January 1996 Forbes Calamity Prevention has helped international companies prepare, manage and test business continuity plans. Our experience is in completing BCP’s in places where BCP is not widely practiced. Our added value is our skill at bringing your management to consensus about their recovery objectives – and getting them to fund those objectives. Established by Nathaniel Forbes, an American entrepreneur who manages the business, FCP has five full-time, multi-lingual professionals (see Our Team for more details). In addition, FCP also works with many other trained BCP professionals. This ensures that we can quickly respond to a sudden change in your requirements and deadlines. FCP is a Singapore-registered company. For our Company Profile document in Adobe Acrobat PDF format, click here. Where does FCP offer its services? All over the world. We have prepared BCP’s in Russia and New York City and all over Asia. Our lower labor costs can make our professional rates very attractive in many countries, even after adding in travel costs. Our professionals are fortunate to be able to fly to nearly anywhere on the world’s most-admired airline, Singapore Airlines. For what kind of companies does FCP prepare BCP’s? Forbes Calamity Prevention (FCP) has years experience preparing BCP’s for banks, insurance companies and brokerages. Since 2000 we have prepared plans for consumer products companies, shipping companies and travel agencies. The internationally-accepted methodology for preparing BCP’s is the same for any business. For example, the process of determining the business impact of a disaster is the same for a bank and for a travel agency; obviously, the actual impact of a disaster will be different for each company. The methodology to decide Recovery Time Objectives and Minimum Operating Requirements is the same for any business activity. Of course, the recovery strategies to meet those objectives and requirements are different: what a bank needs is different than what a manufacturer needs, or what a distributor needs. How long will a BCP “work”? Not long, unless it’s updated regularly. Your BCP is never really finished; there are constant changes in the business which make it necessary to change the BCP. BCP is a journey, not a destination. Why should my company have a BCP? If your company is in an industry that is required to have a BCP, or if your company is located in a developed country, you may not have a choice. Regulations requiring due diligence in protecting investors assets can be found in many countries, and that demonstrating due diligence often means being able to show a written, tested BCP. If your company buys property insurance, it obviously thinks something might go wrong; otherwise, why buy insurance? So, if something does go wrong, how will your company answer the telephone? How will it recover or replace its records? Where will your employees go to resume working? How will you deliver goods or services to customers? Your answers to those questions are the reasons your company should have a BCP. What is required from our company in order to get an estimate from you? A current organization chart for your company and a list of its IT applications are usually enough to get started. Please contact Wendy Leong at wendy@calamity.com.sg. Future FAQ’s we plan to answer
|
|
Need help? In Singapore, call: +65 6324-3091 Fax: +65 6324-3093 Email: chris.tan@calamity.com.sg |
: nathaniel_forbes | AOL IM: KingmanReef|
Our Sponsor
Our Sponsors
|
