Joined-up thinking
Martin Fenlon highlights the value of 
achieving the strategic integration of BCM 
activities between different stakeholders 
both within and outside of your business
W
hat is the point of building a resilient organisation if, A mature BCM capability
following a disaster, your organisation is one of the few The validity of the well-worn mantra ‘business continuity is a
which is still operational? Well, in the private sector, journey not a destination’ can be illustrated in the cycle below. At
assuming you have customers left to serve, you may achieve each stage in the cycle, the BCM professional should be horizon
competitive advantage for a period, but this will only be possible if scanning in order to identify critical dependencies and areas where
your supply chain has not been disrupted. strategic integration is required.
At the time of writing (January 2010), the UK is facing up to
major disruption due to heavy snowfall across the country. This
adverse weather has served in a number of cases to expose the 1. Develop organisational 
fragility of supply chains. For example, haulage companies are BCM arrangements
completely reliant upon the ability of local authorities and the
Highways Agency to keep the roads open. Also there have been
a number of instances where suppliers which have been able to
make their deliveries, have then found that the business premises
are closed due to a lack of staff which the companies failed to 4. Undertake global horizon  2. Co-operate and share BCM 
inform them about. scanning to assess the risks to 
arrangements with other 
your critical activities stakeholders
An integrated approach
In my role, working mainly to improve BCM in UK Category 1
Responders (the emergency services and local authorities), there
are clear interdependencies that require strategic integration of the
3. Understand the wider 
BCM arrangements of each responder.
environmental context in 
The importance for responders of strategically integrating
which you operate
their BCM arrangements with those of other key stakeholders
was illustrated during a previous BCM training event which I 1. Develop organisational BCM arrangements. Get your own house
was involved in. The event took place in a UK city and involved in order first and have a clear idea of “What you would do if…”
representatives from the police, fire & rescue, local authority 2. Co-operate and share BCM arrangements with other key
and health professionals. The scenario was based around a stakeholders. This will help ensure that the BCM responses do
severe weather event in which snow had caused major transport not make the problems worse. This stage identifies what your key
e
problems. During the exercise, it was revealed that while the stakeholders would do and the impact their actions would have
Health Services’ BCM arrangements involved the transfer of critical on your arrangements.
health services from central hospitals to local GP surgeries (to be 3. Next, understand the wider environmental context in which you
nearer the people), the police did not know this and their plans operate and assess the impact of initiatives like ‘Community
included the use of their 4-wheel-drive vehicles to bring people in Resilience’. This UK Government initiative seeks to encourage
need of medical attention to hospital! communities to become more self-reliant. As a result, such
s
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3  Continuity  January/February 2010
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