Selling Business Continuity to the Top Team

“Selling Business Continuity to
the Top Team”
t: +44 (0) 8448 040 653
e: info@aim4gain.com
w: www.aim4gain.com
© AiM Ltd
Some tips on what to say and how to say it
Steve Ackland, 2018

Selling BCM to the Top TeamSlide 2
© AiM Ltd
Copyright and Usage
This presentational material is covered by AiM Ltd’s copyright, although you are
welcome to reproduce so long as it is attributed.
In the AiM briefings and training there is greater use of graphics and of course
narration. In the absence of a narrative, the points made by the graphics can be
missed, so they have been replaced with text.
If you require any further information or want to give some feedback, then
please don’t hesitate to contact Steve Ackland * – Head of Practice in AiM for
Risk, BCM and Security on:
• t: +44 (0) 8448 040 653
• e: steve_ackland@aim4gain.com
• w: www.aim4gain.com
* Steve Ackland is a risk professional with a number of years experience in BCM, DR and security. A regular author of articles and speaker on
BCM and risk, Steve has undertaken assignments for FTSE 100 companies and government departments in the UK and internationally.

© AiM Ltd
Showcase Overview
Convincing a top team to embrace business continuity and spend money
on it during challenging economic times is often a hard sell.
But increasingly business continuity operators understand that to influence
decisions they need to talk the same language as the top teams (decision
makers), focusing on the key areas that matter most to them.
In other words, make a compelling case which ticks the boxes for the key
decision makers such as the CEO, CFO, CIO and COO.
We have worked with all manner of top teams – large, small, private,
public - and understand what grabs and keeps their attention. We will
provide a strategy for building that compelling case and provide insight on
the content of the agenda that should form part of it. We will also show
how business continuity planning software RPX can be an important
enabler in this process.

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Why Top Team Buy-in?
Getting and keeping top team buy-in to business continuity management (BCM) is
critical – indeed it will fail if you don’t.
If you fail to win the hearts and minds of the big hitters then it will be tough, if not
impossible, to drive through long term sponsorship, policy, funding and organisation-wide
commitment to BCM – all critical success factors
And aren’t you rather tired of knowing that during times of economic pressure top teams
not engaged always target BCM as an area to cut ‘unnecessary’ funding?
So how do you get your pitch right..?

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Some Top Team Challenges

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Selling BCM to the Top Team - Strategy
→The aim is to make the top team your ally
→Be aware of and apply 10 core principles
→Sell the Concept
→Speak the language of the top team
→Market BCM during the phases of BCM development

© AiM Ltd
10 Core Principles
1. Face facts - the top team has very limited time and attention span
2. BCM is a culture change project
3. Understand the make-up of the top team and the different objectives of the key
players.
4. Learn the language of the top team and how to educate them
5. Despite what they claim, few top teams understand or manage operational risk
well
6. Top teams often don’t have a single objective view of their appetite for risk
7. Keep calibration of the BCM analysis tools conservative.
8. BCM and the prioritisation of tasks can lead to top team internecine point
scoring.
9. Although BCM planning and analysis are vital, the top team won’t see it as a
good return on investment.
10.Apply good stakeholder management to the top team and do as much off-line
lobbying of members as possible.

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Selling BCM: Top Team Opposition
→“We have been running for years and never had a disaster”
→“We are fully insured against any loss or theft”
→“We are situated in a safe area with good access and robust
infrastructure”
→“Statistically speaking fires, floods, acts of God and terrorism are
rare”
→“Our suppliers have never let us down”
→“We already have an idea of how we will work in an incident”
→“BCM is too expensive to do and we don’t get any return on it”
(particularly during tough economic times)
→“BCM Maintenance involves a big commitment for people with busy
day jobs”

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Selling BCM: Things to Say
→A major incident can happen at any time
→Insurance is a hard market at the moment
→Areas may be safe, but there are as many internal risks as external
risks
→The headline grabbing major incidents are rare, but more prosaic
incidents could have the same business impact
→Any supply chain is a risky framework
→Vague, untested plans or ‘ideas of how to work during a major
incident’ could be worthless
→If BCM is kept simple, focused and reuses existing organisational
structures, planning need not be expensive or difficult to implement
→If kept simple and embedded, BCM becomes just another discipline
like HR, health & safety, credit control

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Selling BCM - Questions for the Top Team
→ What are your key processes or tasks and priorities? What happens if you can’t do
them and how long can you be without them?
→ Who are your important customers and what will they do if they can’t get your
services or products?
→ Who are your important suppliers and what credit arrangements do you have with
them?
→ What do you see as threats/risks to your organisation and what are your tolerances?
And if something happens what will be the impact?
→ If you couldn’t get into your offices, where would you go?
→ How would you communicate with your staff, your insurers, others?
→ Who are your neighbours and what business are they in?
→ If an incident happened today, how confident are you that you would know (i) what
activities the organisation is doing today, tomorrow, next week, (ii) cross-functional
priorities and (iii) maximum period of tolerable disruption?
→ Are you aware of your legal/regulatory obligations and the expectations placed upon
you should you be unable to undertake them?

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Selling BCM: Things not to Say
→The business doesn’t need to take the lead on BCM
→Some parts of the organisation are unimportant (and
therefore don’t need BCM)
→An external specialist team can be procured to
implement BCM in its entirety – internal staff are only
required superficially
→Plan reviews need only take place when required
→Tests/rehearsals are not important and can be missed
once in a while

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Speaking the Language of the Top Team
Role Interests BCM Box Ticking
CEO
(Chief Executive Officer)
Organisation reputation, cost base, risk, stable/growth in revenue,
policy compliance, sound corporate platform for investors and
stakeholders, market capitalisation, shareholder value, no
duplication of effort
Management of assets, understanding of
business value, less risk, sound stewardship
during a major incident saves market
capitalisation/share price, media management
CFO
(Chief Finance Officer)
Cost base, efficiency/removal of waste, return on investment,
financial compliance, financial risk, financial governance for
investors and stakeholders, market capitalisation, shareholder
value
Management of balance sheet assets, market
capitalisation/share price, lower insurance
premiums, reduced financial risk and cost
base
COO
(Chief Operations Officer)
Delivery of quality goods/services, meeting budgets, customer
satisfaction, robust supply chain, operations risk, no duplication of
effort
Higher guarantee of customer order fulfilment,
suppliers checked for own BCM, alternative
sources of supply (dormancy), priority of
supply, lower risk
CIO
(Chief Information Officer)
IT investment delivering business benefits, service availability,
robust IT service model, optimal service availability, cost-effective
change management, effective/efficient/timely project delivery,
integrates easily with current infrastructure
IT and business alignment through RTO and
RPO, understanding of critical systems, DR
embedded in IT resilience and recovery
strategy, reduced downtime, lower system risk
CCO
(Chief Commercial Officer)
Meeting/exceeding sales targets, winning new business,
commercial risk control, marketing/profile
Major incidents could lead to increased market
share, having BCM is often a supplier
requirement in tenders, understanding of sales
and marketing requirements in a major
incident, lower commercial risk
Audit Committee
(Exec and Non-Exec)
Governance, policy compliance, internal control, risk control, best
practice, standards, sound management of objective delivery
Compliance with legislation/regulation, support
of corporate governance and risk management

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Marketing BCM: Analysis Phase
→To avoid top team negative challenges, ensure:
 Terms of reference are clear and focused
 Concepts and analysis are kept as simple as possible and
commensurate with the organisation and top team needs
 A BCM policy is implemented
 This phase - although a vital information gathering step - is seen to be
carried out with minimum disruption to staff, as cheaply as possible and
that it reports quickly
 Risk/exposure and BCM benefit calculations are realistic/conservative/
relevant to the organisation
 Strong communication on progress and deliverables to the top team

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Marketing BCM: Planning Phase
 Plan hierarchy and structure has been agreed
 Roles are appointed
 Plans cannot provide an approach to every single type of incident
 BCM solutions are modular, cost-effective, usable, intuitive – software
should be adaptable to the organisation
 Use the information gathered from the analysis phase to keep the
planning workload to a minimum
 Design sensible scenarios based on threats that are likely to manifest
 Undertake test(s) to sign off the plan(s) with those who will be involved.

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Marketing BCM: Maintenance Phase
 Staff involved know up front their commitment to ongoing maintenance
 A test schedule is in place
 Tests at all levels should be challenging and diverting for those involved.
 Risk and plan review points are in place
 The top team reviews the BCM policy at set dates and has risk/BCM on
their agenda at certain meetings
 BCM and DR are key design considerations in any business process or
IT system

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: How all BCM Software should be
→ RPX is a great enabler in selling the concept of BCM to
the top team
 Integrated series of BCM and planning modules:
 Plans
 Resources and relationships
 Risk and BIA
 Incident management
 Reports
 Dashboards
 Audits and compliance
 Adaptable to the way an organisation works
 Sophisticated migration process for importing existing
plans
 Browser-based and interfaces with all major systems
avoiding duplication
 No hidden costs
 Collaborative, using templates and workflows
 Cost effective
 SaaS or self hosting built on open source making licensing
easy

© AiM Ltd
Summary
→Make the top team your ally
→Apply the 10 core principles
→Sell the Concept
→Speak the language of the top team
→Market BCM
→Choose...

Selling Business Continuity to the Top Team

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