Home » Business Continuity » Disaster Recovery

5 Ways to Build a Business Case for Business Continuity

To win support for a business continuity plan, emphasize ways it can give your company a competitive edge

A good business continuity plan is one that creates alignment among security, IT and corporate strategies and policies. Do the groundwork for that by meeting with the people in individual business units, says Grogan. Try to understand the mindset of the business unit leaders and their expectations for business continuity.

"There is typically a huge disconnect between business unit and IT/security executives, and they need to be on the same page," says Grogan. He suggests vigilance and constant dialogue to address changing security needs. "If the business isn't communicating with IT, then the business continuity strategy will miss the mark and have potentially serious business consequences," he says. More importantly, he says, if you don't have executives who believe the program has value and meets with corporate needs, you will probably never get funding for your plan in the first place.

4) Stay flexible.

Encourage and teach executives that business continuity plans are not one-size-fits-all, says Grogan. Asking for support for a business continuity program doesn't mean you're asking the business to treat every application and piece of infrastructure the same way. "Just because you need failover capability for one application doesn't mean you need that same capability for all files and systems," he says. "Creating a blended solution helps the business become confident they are spending money wisely based on business principals and policies." Again, this gives the plan a better chance of acceptance. Having a flexible system is also increasingly important as threats change. Natural disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes are only part of the risk, alongside information security risks. "The chances of a data center experiencing a security breach are higher than its chances of catching on fire," says Grogan. Threats can come from anywhere on the Internet, which dictates the need for constant monitoring and reevaluation of plans once they are in place.

5) Find ways that business continuity can add to the bottom line.

Finally, try to approach business continuity as a way of doing business--not as an add-on. One way to get executives to see that is to convince them how having a strong plan in place protects the bottom line, Smith says. Having a good business continuity plan can even help win over new business.

"When [the] LaSalle [Bank Building] had a major fire in 2004, they continued to process," Smith says, speaking of a subsidiary of ABN Amro. "No critical functions were interrupted, despite it being one of the largest fires in the history of Chicago." Being known as the one company that has proven to be resilient out of a slew of competitors has brought in new business for LaSalle, he says. "Staying up when others may be down is good business--not to mention good public relations."