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Business Continuity Management (BCM) is a living process. When TAMP is employed
to assist with BCM maintenance and management, we provide regular status reports,
which are intended to keep the BC program alive and on track. The report documents
the completed BC activities, outstanding items, and any identified difficulties before they
become problems. In addition, TAMP maintains a backup copy of its clients' BC/DRP
documentation in its offices.
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Some of the areas within BCM that require continued attention and support include:
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Executive management commitment
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Process owner participation
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Employee awareness
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Plan exercises, tests and simulations
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Plan documentation updates
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At the top of any BCM program is management commitment and funding. A BCM program
cannot survive without it. Along with the experience, TAMP provides the research
to support why management should support a BCM program. For example, to quote Tom
Abruzzo, president of TAMP Systems, "the only thing more difficult than planning
will be explaining why you didn't."
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Participation in the BCM program from department heads and business process or IT
software application owners is essential. These individuals have the knowledge required
for the plan. Generally, these key individuals are more focused on revenue-producing
tasks, which makes it difficult to obtain the information required for business
continuity and disaster recovery plans. However, TAMP consultants have unique methods
and skills to obtain the required information from these very busy individuals with
minimal disruption to their other work priorities.
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After business continuity and/or disaster recovery plans have been published, employee
awareness is generally the easiest part of the BCM program to maintain. TAMP
consultants help organizations establish BCM awareness programs, including integration
of BCM awareness and training into the human resource orientation process. We also
provide refresher training on how to use the BCP documentation, and if employed,
our BCM software.
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In addition to practicing what to do in a real disaster situation, the purpose of
exercising and testing plans is to identify plan information that should be strengthened
or updated based on lessons learned during the exercise. As such, this knowledge
is the fuel for keeping plan documentation up-to-date and executable. The BCP Exercises and Simulations page
on our website provides more information on how TAMP consultants help its clients
with this extremely important fueling component of the BCM program.
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Business continuity and disaster recovery plans contain a tremendous amount of dynamic
data, i.e., information that frequently changes. BCM software is a cost-saving method
to keep pace with the required changes in plan documentation. Below is an image
that depicts how BCM software helps with the laborious manual efforts to keep plan
documentation up-to-date.
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On the left-hand side of the image, there are just three plans. On the right-hand
side, there are only a few of the categories of dynamic data that needs to be integrated
into each of a company's plans.
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It must be emphasized that most organizations will have many more than three plans.
They would probably have a plan for each IT application, additional plans for each
business process, another plan for each of their facilities, and an enterprise plan.
In addition, a company would have many more categories of dynamic data that needs
to be integrated into each of their plans.
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With BCM software automation, a user will save an enormous amount of manual effort
time, and eliminate the mistakes that would be made when this work is accomplished
manually.
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In addition, with web-based BC software, an organization's plans would reside and
be available on a secure website and can be automatically distributed to plan owners,
which will be essential in a disaster situation.
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TAMP Systems has more than 25 years of continuity planning expertise and know-how;
and has earned and maintains a CBCV certification from Disaster Recovery Institute
International (DRII) www.drii.org,
which is the world-wide leader in more than 90 countries for education and certifications
in business continuity management. You can rest secure that Business Continuity
Maintenance Services performed by TAMP will produce valuable results for your organization
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