ISO 22301 Business Continuity Management System

Business continuity & IS0 22301 solutions for improved organisational resilience.

Quality Management Systems is a leading UK disaster recovery and ISO 22301 business continuity management system (BCMS) specialist. Serving organisations of all types, sizes and structures throughout the United Kingdom and internationally we deliver a range of expert business continuity planning solutions including the development and implementation of ISO 22301 based frameworks, standards certification, auditing, training and BCM software.

Our experienced disaster recovery and business continuity specialists help clients develop practical, cost effective business continuity frameworks that integrate with their daily activities to improve organisational resilience when things don’t go to plan. Each of our individually crafted management solutions can be deployed quickly to enhance business continuity protocols, build robust disaster recovery plans, support business-critical processes, and achieve ISO 22301 certification quickly and efficiently.

By focusing on the individual needs of our clients our specialists quickly develop a clear understanding of their operations, highlighting business critical processes, identifying internal and external threats to their business activities, and the integrity of their existing continuity protocols. With this knowledge our consultants then develop clearly defined business continuity management protocols to support and enhance organisational resilience and disater recovery plans. Our robust management frameworks are simple and easy to use, can be deployed quickly and are proven to deliver a number of significant benefits to organisations whatever the size, organisational structure or market sector.

If you would like to learn more about our disaster recovery solutions, what we do and how can help you please get in touch today.

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Benefits of ISO 22301 Business Continuity Management

Our individually tailored business continuity management systems and ISO 22301 standards implementation and certification solutions help build organisational resilience, improve preparedness and strengthen disaster recovery processes to support organisations when things don’t go to plan. The key benefits of our solutions include:

Build Organisational Resilience
Improve organisational resilience during times of local, national or international disruption with world-class disaster recovery planning processes based around the ISO22301 business continuity management standard. Be prepared… manage disruptive events in an effective, controlled manner to ensure key business operations are maintained or recovery is achieved with minimum disruption.
Optimise Quality & Increase Efficiency
Optimise quality, increase efficiency, reduce waste, save money and build profitability with a world-class management framework.
Gain a Competitive Advantage
Demonstrate to all stakeholders an organisational commitment to business continuity, disaster recovery and resilience.
Enhanced Reputation
Enhance your organisations reputation with an internationally recognised business continuity management standard.
Optimise Service Commitments
Understand clearly the threats your organisation faces to help identify and communicate to clients, suppliers and other stakeholders your recovery timescales for critical services.
Effective Regulatory Compliance
Demonstrate your regulatory compliance processes are robust, effective and legally compliant to build stakeholder confidence.
Continuous Improvement
Continuously improve your operations, product quality and service delivery through regular audits and risk assessments.
Cost Savings
A business continuity system can reduce the cost of audits, improve product and service efficiencies and reduce business disruption insurance premiums.

UK & International Capabilities

Our specialist ISO22301 business continuity management and disaster recovery planning solutions are delivered by experienced consultants who combine their expertise with practical know-how across their specialist areas to deliver real performance improvements to organisational resilience and business contingency planning.

Our main offices are located in London and Manchester and these are further supported by regional teams of specially trained continuity management and standards implementation specialists who deliver expert advice and BCM support solutions to meet the highest standards of performance expected by our clients.

Contact Quality Management Systems today to learn how our expert continuity planning and ISO 22301 implementation and accreditation solutions can help you build practical, easy to use frameworks that deliver robust management processes to support organisational recovery when things go wrong. To speak with one of our experts call us on 0330 223 25 85 or simply use the button below to get our full contact details or submit our contact contact form.

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What is Business Continuity Management?

Whether you are a new business that is still relatively small or a much larger organisation, it is important that you have a well developed business continuity management system in place to protect your business from threats of all kinds.

All organisations should ensure they are well prepared, and capable of dealing with the different forms of disruption they may face from time to time, not only for the benefit of the organisation itself but also for its employees, customers, suppliers, investors and other stakeholders.

In business a threat can arise at any time to cause disruption, and the only way to protect against such events is to have professional, well-structured business continuity protocols in place.

Understanding the different requirements of a business continuity management system can be complex, but one of the key elements to focus on is the internationally recognised management standard ISO 22301.

ISO 22301 is a management standard that deals with business continuity planning. The importance of having a tried-and-tested management system in place is important as it helps to ensure the required processes and procedures are well established. This is essential as it helps an organisation to manage disruptive events in an effective, controlled manner and so ensure key business operations are maintained or recovery is achieved with minimum disruption.

Here we take a look at ISO 22301 and work to understand why it is so important, what it involves and how organisations can achieve this standard. As business continuity experts we have the insight and expert knowledge required to ensure all bases are covered.

The Principles of Business Continuity Management

There are a number of important principles required for the effective implementation of any effective continuity management system. Our ISO 22301 based BCM frameworks are based on the recognised Plan – Do – Check – Act or PDCA cycle. This tried-and-tested approach of review, evaluation and improvement helps organisations of all shapes and sizes to fulfil their business continuity objectives in a structured, well planned way. It also helps them to identify future improvements.

Plan – Do – Check – Act

These principles should be adopted by all organisations whatever their size, structure or sector. There are however opportunities for organisations to tailor any BCM system they adopt to suit their own business recovery objectives and market sector.

The main principles of all good business continuity management systems include:

Build a Comprehensive Plan
Consider the significant events (risks) an organisation may encounter, the potential impact of each event, and mitigation and recovery objectives. Typically events can include internal and external; and local, national and international ones.

Clarify the recovery objectives of the organisation and how to achieve them in the most effective way. This will also include meeting any contractual, legal and regulatory standards that must be achieved.

Realistic objectives and targets should be agreed upon and then incorporated in to an action plan. This action plan should identify roles and responsibilities, timescales and those actions required to meet the business recovery objectives and targets that have been set.
Implement each step of the action plan
Implementation is essential, following through with each step of the continuity action plan will help to ensure every part of the plan is delivered.

This implementation stage should include the development of practical recovery procedures, establishing clear lines of communication, staff training and raised awareness of potential risks.
Check & Evaluate The Results
Performing regular audits to check and evaluate an organisations performance against its stated aims and objectives is very important.

These stages ensure every step in the plan has been covered. It also helps to ensure the actions taken have delivered the desired results.
Review & Make Improvements
Once evaluation of an organisations performance is complete, any improvements to the existing business continuity system can be identified and then implemented. This iterative stage is essential to ensure continuous improvement can be achieved.

What is ISO 22301?

The internationally recognised ISO 22301 standard helps organisations recognise and then prioritise potential threats it may face either locally, nationally or internationally. A well-structured business continuity management system will identify the steps required to reduce the threat of disruption, protect assets if something does go wrong, and recover quickly from incidents when they occur.

The standard is based on the requirement that an organisation has well established practices and procedures in place to reduce the negative impact of a disruptive event, and so aid the chances of recovery. It is an international standard for business continuity that experts suggest should be met. So, even if your business operates in multiple countries and across different continents, the same ISO 22301 is followed. ISO22301 has been developed by business continuity experts and provides a detailed framework for any business to follow when it comes to managing disaster planning business continuity.

Understanding what is involved in this framework can be complex and that is why there are process management experts such as QMS on hand to help. But in short, ISO 22301 identifies the requirement to have a management system in place that can protect against disruptive local, national, or even international events when they occur. This includes maintaining and continually improving the BCMS, operating and monitoring it at all times and reviewing it when necessary. Additionally, management systems should include how to respond to, and recover from such events.

Though the requirements of the standard are typically generic and are not aimed at one type of business, they are very flexible and can work for all. Regardless of the business size or structure, the standard can be put into place in the form of a management system for all organisations.

Why Implement a Business Continuity Management System?

If implemented properly a business continuity management system has a number of significant benefits, the most notable being that it can decrease the impact a disruptive incident has on an organisation, and help it recover quickly and efficiently. The standard also improves the management of current threats to a business, identifies future threats and minimises the impact these potential threats may have. Some of the key benefits include:

Organisational Resilience
Build an organisational culture based on resilience by adopting a world-class disaster recovery management system constructed on the highly regarded ISO 22301 business continuity management standard. Disruptive events such as fire, flood, storm, power outage, breaches of security, data loss etc. do happen, and when they do organisations need to be fully prepared. Being able to manage disruption in an effective way and so ensure key business operations are protected or recovery is achieved with minimum disruption can be critical to the survival of any organisation.
Optimise Quality & Efficiency
Optimise quality, increase efficiency, reduce waste, save money and build profitability with a world-class management framework built on the tried and tested Plan-Do-Check-Act or PDCA cycle.
Competitive Advantage
Formal certification to ISO 2230 demonstrates a clear organisational commitment to business continuity, disaster recovery and resilience. This can give you a significant competitive advantage, making your organisation more attractive to employees, clients, suppliers and investors.
Enhanced Reputation
Enhance your organisations reputation with an internationally recognised ISO business continuity management standard. Improve your corporate image and commitment to organisational resilience with staff, clients, suppliers, regulators, investors and other stakeholders.
Service Delivery Commitments
Developing a thorough understanding of the potential threats your organisation may face together with robust disaster recovery processes helps to identify and communicate recovery timescales for all critical services to clients, suppliers, investors and other stakeholders.
Regulatory Compliance
Demonstrate that your regulatory compliance processes and procedures are robust, effective and legally compliant, even under the most challenging of circumstances, to build increased stakeholder confidence.
Continuous Improvement
Continuously improve your operations, product quality and service delivery through regular audits and risk assessments to ensure your management systems are continually effective.
Improved Profitability
A well-developed business continuity plan or system built around your internal processes and certified to ISO 22301 can help to reduce the cost of internal and external audits, improve product and service efficiencies and potentially reduce business disruption insurance premiums.

Continuity Management & ISO 22301 Certification

Organisations wanting to implement a framework to help them focus on their business continuity and disaster recovery responsibilities should seriously consider adopting a recognised management system already used by other organisations and companies worldwide.

ISO 22301 is built on the Plan – Do – Check – Act or PDCA cycle and is the now the most popular business continuity management standard having been adopted by thousands of organisations around the world.

ISO 22301:2012 is ideal for organisations who wish to implement such a system for the first time. It is also perfect for businesses that are currently using a different system, and wish to make the move over to the world-leading BCMS.

Implementing ISO 22301:2012

Implementing a business continuity system demonstrates a serious commitment for any organisation, whatever its size or structure. Once the decision is made however, it is important to ensure its implementation receives the full support of senior management from the outset, and that the initial implementation stages are seen positively.

This implementation process can be made easier by adopting a tried and tested continuity management system such as ISO 22301:2012. Implementing this internationally recognised standard is not simply a case of adopting a one-size-fits-all framework. Rather, it provides the opportunity to adopt a highly successful framework that can be tailored to suit the specific demands of an organisation. This is true whether the organisation is large or small, is in its infancy or has been established for many years.

The benefits of a robust, well structured business continuity management system can be significant, especially if there is real commitment to its ongoing success at all levels.

Manage your business continuity systems more effectively with our software solutions

Business Continuity Management & Disaster Recovery Support

Contact Quality Management Systems today to discuss your business continuity and ISO 22301 standards requirements. Our experts can provide practical, cost effective advice and support on all aspects of disaster recovery, ISO22301 implementation, accreditation support, auditing and training… all tailored to meet the needs of your organisation.

With offices in London and Manchester, supported by regional teams of specially trained process management and standards implementation specialists we can deliver simple, easy to use continuity management frameworks that work to enhance what you do.

Contact us today for more information about our disaster planning solutions, or for your FREE, no obligation quote.

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