Not all organizations that have business continuity plans in place fully understand the point at which the plan should be invoked. Here, Wayde Anderson highlights six points that can help with the invocation decision:
- What is the estimated time required to restore onsite and does this breach your recovery time objective?
- What are the service-level agreements in place with critical suppliers? Have these been reviewed and tested? ISP, voice and network infrastructure providers, logistical suppliers, software management suppliers like SAP or payroll systems as well as those further down your supply chain.
- When the recovery time is uncertain, what is the point in time by which the decision must be made to invoke the business continuity plan if the disruption cannot be resolved within recovery point objective timelines?
- Has the disruption occurred at a critical time of the month or year, and what is the worst case scenario?
- How long does it take to have the disaster recovery site ready to continue working?
- What are the recovery priorities and are they based on achievable recovery times?
Wayde Anderson is customer manager at ContinuitySA.
