A business continuity plan provides your company with the roadmap to navigate a major business disruption, including a natural disaster or large-scale emergency. Successful Business Continuity Plans Are Put into Action Before a Crisis. The key is Test. Test and Test your BCMS regularly.

Organizations should have in place a solid BCP strategy that is not just well laid out but is also effective in implementation. So, once an organization develops a Business Continuity Plan it is crucial to test its effectiveness. Testing the Plan verifies the effectiveness of the strategy in place and trains responsible personnel for the real scenario. Moreover, the test helps identify areas of concern where the plan needs to be strengthened.

The three most important elements of an effective business continuity management system are the affirmative and demonstrated support for the program by top management, the business impact analysis, and its exercise and testing program. Business Continuity Testing is an integral part of doing Business Continuity Management.

Many organizations perform annual disaster recovery exercises, in an attempt to prove their organization’s (or IT supplier’s) ability to recover the IT infrastructure and/or software systems in the event of a catastrophic loss of data centre. During these exercises, more often than not, the systems recovered undergo only a cursory level of unit testing and rarely (if ever) an integrated end-to-end test with the other continuity plans.

Having a plan in place is only the first step; the plan also needs to be continuously monitored and tested for gaps or obstacles. Even if you have a solid plan in place, it’s still wise to review it again after a few months. Come up with a schedule for testing the plan and share it with employees.

At Seven Step Consulting we believe that without formal processes and guidelines, ad hoc responses will likely extend downtime and business loss. Hence Business Continuity Plans must be tested to ensure they will enable the organization to weather disruption.

Our Tiered Approach to Business Continuity Testing ensures that you are always sure about the effectiveness of your Business Continuity Plans Our Five-Tiered business continuity testing approach covers the gamut from TableTop Testing to testing with full-scale exercises involve all of the teams that would work on a real-life crisis. Our Business Continuity Testing exercises will involve

1. All employees of your business
2. Your emergency response team
3. Your business continuity team
4. The crisis communications group

When we conduct a business continuity plan testing exercise, we verify how effective the plan is in real-time scenarios. when we test your plan, we are always looking for weaknesses or gaps in the plan. Once weaknesses are identified, your teams can work along with us together to improve them.

A fully managed test orchestrated by our BC experts, gives you the ability to test the recovery of your systems, applications, and infrastructure. The test includes an audit-ready annual report to help meet industry compliance regulations

The benefits of validating your Business Continuity Testing documentation are as under:

1. Accuracy of the documentation.
2. Accuracy of the Business Continuity Plan
3. Accuracy of the contact lists
4. Validation of BC Assumptions
5. Identification of Gaps in the Business Continuity Plan
6. Identification of unknown contingencies.
7. A tested plan has a much higher possibility of succeeding during a real event.

Additional benefits Business Continuity Testing are:

1. Verifying resource availability or capability.
2. Training team members for their recovery roles.
3. Determining the actual length of recovery time and the ability to achieve the desired company RTO.
4. Assessing the true functional recovery of the areas tested.

Although never “finished” because of the need for continuous improvement, the adage that “a plan is not complete until it is tested” is insightful. Business continuity plans developed by some of the best professionals in the business that appeared to be perfect when peer reviewed by other professionals were found to have missed important details when simulated against a scenario

When you conduct your BC Testing with us we help you with a vital aspect of your BCM program. We demonstrate the actual functional capability of your documentation and technical implementation and help you identify the gaps in your BC Plan. We will help you will validate the effectiveness of strategies, ensure the accuracy of information, and increase the preparedness of the individuals who will execute the plans. We work closely during the Business Continuity Testing to ensure that the business continuity management system objectives set by you are met.

Contact us today and see how we can help you cope with unexpected disasters.