Exploring Business Continuity Management

  • Release version: Washingtondc
  • Updated February 1, 2024
  • 3 minutes to read
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    Summary of Exploring Business Continuity Management

    The Business Continuity Management (BCM) application provides a structured framework for managing ongoing business continuity tasks, including business impact analysis, planning, exercise management, and crisis management. This application enhances an organization's ability to address issues and swiftly recover from disruptions.

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    Key Features

    • Role-Based Access: Administrators can set up the application, while managers handle day-to-day operations.
    • Workflow Steps: Key steps include downloading the application, creating business impact analyses, formulating business continuity plans, and managing crisis responses.
    • Interactive Dashboards: Users can monitor tasks and critical services from a centralized dashboard.
    • Emergency Notifications: Integration with Everbridge allows for the timely notification of stakeholders during crises.
    • BCM Configurable Workspace: From version 5.x.x, tasks can be performed using an intuitive functionality that enhances user experience.

    Key Outcomes

    By leveraging the BCM application, users can effectively manage business continuity activities, assess critical services, prepare and finalize continuity plans, and respond to crises. This structured approach leads to improved resilience, minimized downtime, and better overall management of disruptions.

    Discover how to manage your business continuity tasks with the Business Continuity Management application, using its predefined templates and workflows.

    Business Continuity Management overview

    The Business Continuity Management application offers a structured framework for ongoing management tasks such as business impact analysis, business continuity planning, exercise management, and crisis management. The structured workflows improve your organization's ability to tackle issues and quickly recover from disruptions.

    Business Continuity Management users

    Table 1. Users
    User Description
    Administrators Administrators can set up the application for managing business continuity tasks.
    Managers Managers have access to the application tables and can manage day-to-day business continuity tasks.

    Business Continuity Management workflow

    A typical workflow in the Business Continuity Management application includes the following steps to manage your business continuity tasks.

    BCM high level workflow.

    1. An administrator downloads the Business Continuity Management application from ServiceNow Store.
    2. The BCM administrator sets up the Business Continuity Management application and the templates for performing the business continuity activities.
    3. The BCM program manager or business impact analysis (BIA) administrator creates a business impact analysis to determine the impact of a disruption on the business processes and IT applications. The BIA administrator also focuses on the consequences of incidents and estimates the time of recovery to resume normal business operations.
    4. The BCM program manager or BCM lead reviews the assessments and approves the business impact analysis.
    5. The BCM program manager or business continuity plan (BCP) administrator creates a business continuity plan and adds the relevant assets, scope, documentation, related plans, recovery teams, loss scenarios, and recovery tasks to it. The BCP administrator then sends an approval request to the BCM lead to review and approve the business continuity plan.
    6. The BCM program manager creates exercise events, tracks the assets and their dependencies, and approves the exercise events.
    7. The BCM program manager responds to the crisis events, tracks the assets and their associated dependencies, and manages the recovery tasks to mitigate the negative impact of a disruption.
    8. The BCM program manager manages the alerts from the Crisis map interface and initiates the response workflows to minimize the downtime.
    9. The BCM administrator or BCM program manager sends the emergency notifications in Everbridge notifications system and notifies the stakeholders about the crisis alerts.

    Business Continuity Management benefits

    The Business Continuity Management application provides the following benefits:

    Benefit Feature Users
    Manage your business continuity activities from the interactive dashboard in the Home page. Home page view BCM program manager
    Monitor your individual and team tasks from a single dashboard in the My tasks view. My tasks page view BCM program manager
    Assess your critical business services and IT applications by creating a business impact analysis. Create a business impact analysis BCM program manager or BIA administrator
    Prepare a business continuity plan with a response strategy and get it reviewed by the BCM leads and program managers. Create a business continuity plan BCM program manager or BCP administrator
    Finalize your business continuity plan by continuously testing and exercising an event. Create an exercise BCM program manager or BCM planner
    Respond to an actual crisis event and manage the associated event tasks. Start a crisis event BCM program manager or BCM planner
    Respond to the alerts in Crisis map and set the recovery tasks into action to manage the alerts. Manage the alerts in Crisis map BCM administrator or BCM program manager
    Notify the stakeholders about the crisis alerts by sending emergency notifications in Everbridge. Sending emergency notifications with Everbridge BCM administrator or BCM program manager

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