Value of BCM Software

Many companies justify BCM in a number of ways. Some see it  as an insurance policy and some see it as an opportunity to improve process, reduce costs and the impact associated with unplanned incidents. All of these can be shown to have an associated monetary value for a company once aligned with the company’s financial guidelines. None of these approaches are wrong, the key question is, what are you looking for BCM to solve and why?

Once your company understands this, it will  indicate the value it has to offer your organisation.  This simple fact is that effective BCM delivers significant value to all the organisations stakeholders, including the shareholders, customers, executive management team, employees , suppliers , regulatory bodies  and the highly influential media and to each of these the focus and amount of value it offers will be different.

For the shareholder, it will be the knowledge that their financial investment has been made with a company that understands the need for an ongoing return and that all reasonable efforts have been appropriated to secure this.

For the executive management team, it demonstrates their clear leadership, understanding and commitment of their corporate and legal responsibility to the shareholders, customers employees and regulatory bodies and enables them to demonstrate that they have acted in good faith in delivering against these.

For the employee, it is the security of having a clear and precise understanding of what they are responsible for and knowing they are up to date with their training to enable them to complete their tasks within an appropriate time frame and to the required standard.

For the customer, like the shareholder it demonstrates a level of company  responsibility that encourages further procurement, in fact many companies now require a demonstrable business continuity plan as part of their procurement process. In addition, it reduces the overall impact of an event to the customer.

For the suppliers, regulators and media it provides a centralised control centre to make contact with and gain a single coherent message and what supportive actions they can appropriate. In addition, it gives external parties confidence that the event is being managed correctly.

 The BCM software is a key part of the BCM jigsaw puzzle as it delivers an enterprise wide platform to deliver all of the above.  BCM software materialises the BCM plan from book on a shelf book to an everyday operational practice  and delivers:  

1. Significant cost reduction and impact of unplanned events and BCM
2. A medium for knowledge and experience transfer
3. Centralised and unified control and management
4. Centralised and auditable training
5. A reduction of complexity and individuals effort
6. Enterprise  visibility
7. Effective communication
8. Moves the BCM plan from book on a shelf to operational deployment.

Typically our software partner Intrapoint's customers are companies that really understand the legal and commercial impact a serious events or crisis will have on their organisation. They realise that the effective deployment of BCM and supporting infrastructure is key in their long-term company performance and potentially survival. In addition, they realise the need to control, manage and reduce overall BCM costs whilst delivering effective solutions. Some of the feedback from  customers who have implemented Intrapoint's  crisis and incident  management software include:

• A 60% gain in operational efficiency during an incident  
• 300% savings in training costs
• Enormous ”buffer” on media response time
• Assured automated compliance
• Keeps Executive Management up to date

The  customers understand the difference from having a BCM strategy and plan to a realisable solution and how the BCM software and methodology can be employed to improve their everyday operational capability. Customers understand the evolution a system like this delivers to their corporate culture,   when it moves from just being used at crisis or disaster level events,  to being used within standard operations to mange incident level events,  so when finally a big event does occur , the infrastructure, culture , procedures and training are in place so it will be seamlessly and professionally managed across the organisation,  minimising the impact and delivering a rapid recovery, as demonstrated by a number of customers.

In addition, they understand that experience is a great teacher and that currently they have a number of key personnel with real life experience and see the value of extracting this and passing this information and knowledge on to the whole organisation.