Reasons for Failure of Business Continuity Plans

Posted December 31st, 2008 by admin

I was recently attending a conference on Business Continuity Management, and happened to attend an enlightening talk given by Mr. Vijay Sethi, CIO of Hero Honda – the world’s single-largest two wheeler company. The focus of the talk was on “Reasons for BCP Failure”, and I believe the points given below are highly applicable to a lot of organizations. With his permission, I am presenting the key ideas presented:

1. Faulty drivers for implementing BCP
A lot of organizations implement BCP because customers demand it, or they need it for ISO 27001 certification, or because their auditors have repeatedly stated so.

2. Not business-centric
A lot of BCPs end up becoming focused purely on IT infrastructure, and are more like Disaster Recovery Plans, rather than comprehensive Business Continuity Plans.

3. No clear owner of the BCM process
The success or failure of the BCM depends on who is the internal driver or champion of the process. Thus the owner of the BCM should be clearly defined. While, the CIO or CTO could be the owner, he must ensure he has a larger business perspective, and more importantly the rest of the organization should not see it as an technology-focused initiative, rather as something that affects all of them. Read the rest of this entry »