Business Continuity Management
What is Business Continuity Management?
Business continuity management (BCM) helps organizations build operational resilience by identifying potential threats and working to mitigate them, safeguarding a business against disruptions and helping to ensure operations can continue without interruption.
Why is BCM Important?
In an unpredictable and ever-changing business landscape, an effective BCM strategy can contribute to your business’s long-term success. It not only mitigates risks and protects against potential disruptions but can also enhance reputation, build customer trust and provide a competitive edge.
Key Components of Business Continuity Management
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Risk Assessment and Business Impact Analysis
This involves systematically identifying and evaluating potential risks and their consequences on critical business processes. This helps organizations prioritize mitigation efforts and effectively allocate resources.
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Emergency Response Plan
A plan for efficiently deploying and coordinating services and personnel in the quickest timeframe following an unplanned event. It focuses on ensuring life safety and reducing overall severity.
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Crisis Management Plan
The coordination of an organization's strategic and communications response to a crisis in a timely manner, avoiding and/or reducing damage to profitability, reputation and operations.
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Operational Recovery Plan
The recovery plans and strategies created to ensure that personnel and assets are protected, and operations are efficiently restored following a disaster.
How Aon Can Help
At Aon, we offer a wide range of services to help organizations develop effective BCM strategies that support operational resilience, including:
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BCM Program Development
We help organizations build and enhance business continuity management programs to formalize their mission, structure and governance (i.e., roles, responsibilities, accountabilities and organizational configuration) and outline reliable standards that maximize compliance with the organization’s resilience expectations.
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BCM Exercise Planning
We assess the effectiveness of an organization’s existing business continuity plans to help identify areas for further plan development or enhancement. This helps companies ensure they are prepared to handle disruptions confidently.
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BCM Training Modules
Our team of specialists delivers comprehensive BCM training, experienced guidance and facilitation services tailored to organizations’ needs. This helps support the development of business continuity plans or specific planning components.
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Vendor Resiliency
We can assess organizations’ relationships with vendors and suppliers to determine the overall criticality of the relationship to business operations, providing a comprehensive assessment of their impact on business operations. This process supports the prioritization and strengthening of key partnerships, helping to ensure the continuity and resilience of operations.
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Disaster Recovery Design
We provide oversight on the formal development of a disaster recovery plan. Our BCM specialists confirm and validate the exercise to ensure that it touches all key risks.
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Impact Tolerance Analysis
We facilitate a workshop interview session with a business’ C-Suite to assess overall sensitivity and awareness of known risks, threats, exposures and program expectations. The analysis provides insights that enhance risk management strategies, helping to foster a culture of preparedness and resilience.
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BCP Maturity Assessment
We help organizations gain a clear understanding of their business continuity plan program’s maturity level. We offer tailor-made assessment options, including streamlined desktop reviews for undeveloped or beginner programs, as well as in-depth evaluations using our Maturity Assessment Benchmark Workbook for well-established programs. The insights support strategic decision-making and targeted improvements to drive operational resilience and preparedness.
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Emergency Response Planning
We review, analyze and develop emergency response plans that are designed to address a wide range of general and specific emergencies that may impact an organization’s operations.
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Crisis Management and Communication
Our specialists can review, analyze, develop and test crisis management and communication plans to ensure that these plans are up-to-date, exercised and effective.
Product / Service
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