Business Continuity & Recovery

The challenge of continuity

Your company’s IT infrastructure is now a critical resource as essential as financial or human resources.

It must be obvious that you are never immune to a massive disruption of your information systems following a disaster, which will certainly generate losses of means of production, or worse, data loss with nightmarish consequences: failure to respond to requests from your customers, delays in orders, missed delivery times, termination of contracts, loss of confidence, disappointed and angry shareholders, and the loss of reputation often impossible to restore.

This kind of event doesn’t just happen to others. In specialist circles, we often say:

“There are two types of organizations: those that have suffered a major disaster and those that will be.”
Statistics from the Business Continuity Institute report that, out of 100 organizations that were hit by a disaster, 45 could not recover and 30 will disappear within the next 2 years.

Let’s face it: a business continuity plan will not eliminate the risk of disaster for your business, but you will have made every effort to reduce the likelihood of occurrence and the impact on your business. And even if you know you need to protect your business from the multitude of threats – from the “bad” server crash to the fire not to mention the massive loss of telecommunications or half of your staff is missing due to a flu pandemic – you are probably unable to provide the resources to deal with this issue or you do not know how to deal with such a complex problem.

A2F Consulting can relieve you of both complexity and availability issues. It brings a wealth of experience from countless projects in this field, in industry groups, as well as in government and financial institutions. Our consultants have solid theoretical and practical skills supported by the corresponding certifications (Members of the Business Continuity Institute). They master the process of preparing business continuity plans covering the multiple aspects related to business processes, related logistics and IT resources, as well as crisis management. Business continuity and disaster recovery are processes that transcend purely technological issues.

A2F Consulting can assist you in implementing the internationally recognized Recovery Planner solution to help you better manage your business continuity.

Business Continuity Plan Life Cycle

The ISO 22301 standard is a family of requirements dealing with the problem of business continuity. This standard provides a basis for understanding, developing and implementing business continuity in an organization, so as to build trust in Business-to-Business and Business-to-Customer relationships. The ISO 22301 standard was developed by practitioners of continuity management and is based on considerable experience in this field. The standard also allows an organization to measure its capacity for implementing a Business Continuity Management System (BCMS).

A2F Consulting makes sure to guide the implementation of a continuity management program in order to meet the guidelines and guiding principles of ISO 22301 and internationally recognized professional practices. Unless a specific certification is targeted, the recommendations and solutions will be adapted to the reality of each client. The specific context of the client is thus taken into account at all stages of the implementation of the continuity management program by our consultants. They can assist each client in defining the governance rules of the continuity management program that will suit the organization and reality of the Client. Policy, governance rules, management principles, these are all elements that will be established to comply with best practices and ensure an appropriate management framework for the continuity management program.

A2F Consulting supports you in ISO 22301 certification by implementing a BCMS including:
Risk analysis and BIA
Tailor-made solutions and strategies
Development of continuity plans and procedures
Awareness and training program
Exercises and plan maintenance