Version 5.7 of ResilienceONE® BCP Software Deployed

Posted on July 13, 2011 by frank-fa

Strategic BCP, Inc., a leading business continuity planning (BCP) company, today announced that its latest ResilienceONE® BCP software version has been deployed to its entire client base totaling more than 36,000 users nationwide.

ResilienceONE® is cloud BCP software that analyzes organizations’ risk, automates essential BCP tasks such as objectively determining organizations’ most important business functions, and pinpoints what business functions need to be recovered the quickest to mitigate loss and resume business operations. The web-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) uses business process-based metrics and algorithms to help BCP personnel build powerful recovery plans that are aligned with their respective organizations’ goals.

A major enhancement in ResilienceONE® version 5.7 is the development of a Master Recovery Schedule. This feature allows users to easily cross-section their Business Impact Analyses (BIA) and Recovery Timeframe Objectives (RTO) – data and reports that show how an organizations’ people, IT, and vendors are linked, and what steps are needed to recover these assets – in a brief Microsoft® Excel® document.

“Since our inception we have worked with and listened to our fellow business continuity professionals when enhancing our ResilienceONE software,” says Frank Perlmutter, president and co-founder of Strategic BCP. “Our new Master Recovery Schedule report addresses our users’ demands, pinpointing gaps in between recovery capabilities and business requirements and breaking down an organizations’ potential impact using both quantitative and qualitative measures. This report is the ultimate in Business Impact Analyses and can arm planners with the most detailed, unmatched analytics in our industry.”

Other enhancements released include more robust password and security parameters that allow organizations to meet the strictest of security standards. The software’s plan generator was also upgraded allowing users to generate and reorder any system content or attachments in a single document.

“Ease of use reigns supreme in the world of software, but developing powerful, actionable plans is vital in the world of business continuity. Our goal is to offer both,” says Perlmutter. “ResilienceONE develops comprehensive plans, but is also easy-to-navigate software that anyone within an organization can use immediately if a disaster strikes.”

Strategic BCP offers demos of its ResilienceONE® BCP software for the media, business continuity planners and consultants, and executives from organizations of all sizes, from small to mid-sized companies to global enterprises. Please email contact@strategicbcp.com for more information.

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Business Continuity Planning Software Survey Results

Posted on June 29, 2011 by frank-fa

Strategic BCP has made it a priority since its inception to arm our fellow BCP planners with powerful planning tools that can help them increase their value at their organizations.

We listen to our customers so they can utilize software that’s easy to navigate and deploy for their customers, the people using their BC plans.

In an effort to continue to develop BCP software based on real user demands, we polled nearly 200 people recently about the software they are currently using. See some of the highlights listed below, and please share your thoughts about the interesting findings.

Major Need: Serving Unlimited Users

More than 50% of respondents said they need to serve an unlimited number of users with their BC software.

Our Take: BC plans need to be utilized by everyone in an organization, not just a few planners. Charging per-seat for BCP software seems counter-intuitive.

Continue reading →

Don’t Miss Our BCP Webinar Today!

Posted on May 18, 2011 by frank-fa

Mark Eggleston, manager of Security & Business Continuity at Health Partners of Philadelphia, will join Frank Perlmutter to present our webinar “Metrics that Superpower Your Business Continuity Program.”

Check back later today for a link to our slides!

Thoughts on Paper Business Continuity Plan Documents

Posted on May 12, 2011 by frank-fa

Our company was built by business continuity planners who have been in the industry for dozens of years. Our experiences have led us through pitfalls that many planners fall into, and we came together to chart a new course for planners.

One of the major problems we’ve seen deals with static paper plans. In our experience, static plans, whether they are electronic PDFs or on actual paper, present major challenges during outages due to their outdated nature and inflexibility.

Continue reading →

Easy to Use vs. Useless: Is it Possible to Dumb Down Software Too Much?

Posted on March 23, 2011 by frank-fa

We constantly hear claims from BC software vendors about “ease-of-use.” As a BC software vendor, making your product easy to use is paramount. However, the second part of the equation is the software’s usefulness, or its utility. This concept is equally vital.

For example, you can make software “easy-to-use” with MS Office templates and fill in the blanks right out of the box. But this wouldn’t be very useful since the documents cannot share data, provide company-wide analysis, or act as a “living” plan.

You can easily put templates into SharePoint, but once again the documents remain locked in folders and difficult to share.

Continue reading →

What to Look for in Your BCP Software Vendor: Out of the Box or Boxed In?

Posted on February 21, 2011 by frank-fa

Continuing my series on what to look for in your BCP software vendor, today’s post is on software configuration — what’s expected when you purchase business continuity software? Some software packages require extensive configuration (i.e. several months to a year) prior to you actually being able to use the software to build your plans. Configuration can consist of basic tasks like inputting information about your company or entering users to more complex tasks like configuring software fields, designing the screens users see, or mapping database fields for reports.

You want to start building your BCP as quickly as possible with as little configuration of the software as possible. Users of software packages that require extensive configuration generally abandon it soon after purchase, as both executives and users become frustrated that multiple internal resources have to commit so much time upfront and that real business continuity planning is delayed. Unfortunately, I see this all the time at companies we’re talking to who initially went with another vendor.

The best sources of information on software configuration are people who have used multiple BCP software solutions. Ask them how long it took to configure each program and which one they like best.

Here’s a trick for spotting software solutions that require extensive training: check the vendor’s website for education or training sections that specify the need for specialized IT training. Beware of training sessions that require complicated skill sets such as database configuration or Crystal Reporting. These are skills expected of IT professionals. BCP software should not require that you waste precious time and money learning them.

How long did it take you to configure your BCP software?

-Frank

What to Look for in Your BCP Software Vendor: Real-Time Incident Management

Posted on February 10, 2011 by frank-fa

In my last article in this series, I asked you to consider whether your BCP software is a complete product or a pieced-together package with code that’s owned by multiple vendors. Today, I’m thinking about the importance of real-time incident management in BCP software. You can’t plan for everything, so your plans need to assume a set worst-case scenario. We all know that a disaster never happens like we think it will and the impact that is actually incurred may be vastly different than what we had expected. Therefore, our plans need to be flexible, interactive, and most of all accommodating to the actual situation at hand for them to be useful.

Interactive Incident Management is the concept that your business continuity plan should accommodate the best path to recovery by providing real-time information in a flexible format. If you look at most planning systems, Interactive Incident Management simply means they’ll display a static plan document in Word or PDF on the screen. The bottom line is…the plan ‘is what it is.’

Interactive Incident Management is real-time. It considers the situation at hand and molds the response around best handling the event to limit impact. To best address a real situation, decision-makers need real-time information on the status of their critical infrastructure – their people, facilities, information technology, data, and assets. They next need to know how this status affects them continuing their company’s operations. The appropriate response and recovery measures can then be tailored to meet the situation head-on and limit impact.

Plans that start as paragraphs or static documents, whether on paper or stored electronically, are typically useless. They may provide some guidance in decision-making but rarely are they a step-by-step guide to recovery. Valuable time is wasted coming up with plans on the spot.

In contrast, Interactive Incident Management puts information about operational impact right at a decision-maker’s fingertips. It maps step-by-step normal operations and work-arounds for operations without infrastructure. All infrastructure items (the people, facilities, information technology, data, and assets mentioned before) are tied directly to operations so decision-makers know immediately what is affected by the event and can utilize their plans accordingly to map the quickest path to recovery. The best plans consider a worst-case scenario where any event of a lesser impact can easily be accommodated by operating that part of the process normally.

Does your BCP software offer real-time incident management? If not, is it time to consider another vendor?

-Frank