An expert panel will discuss the most pressing issues in this industry and answer your questions. Topics will include the challenges of balancing numerous healthcare compliance bodies, aligning your BCP strategy to anticipate and tackle the sweeping changes of health care reform, balancing the life-saving mission of healthcare professionals with the requirement to continue business operations, and more.

We encourage you to submit your own topics to the panel of this BCP webinar. Topic suggestions and questions will be accepted through the close of business on Friday, February 17. Please email ideas to contact@strategicbcp.com.

Any BC professional can benefit from this discussion, as many issues we will be discussing are ubiquitous challenges across the entire BC industry. Following the webinar a discussion group will be created to provide a continuing dialogue for all attendees.

As you may know, Strategic BCP is active in the community and works with various organizations such as CPR for CATS, a not-for-profit, no-kill organization dedicated to rescuing cats from federal, state, and local park systems, where they have been born or dumped. CPR traps and vaccinates feral (wild) cats, as well as abandoned house cats and kittens.

Over the past few years year, we have been able to provide both standard and emergency veterinary care to over 25 animals. We are proud to sponsor this important program again this year. For more information, please visit http://cprforcats.tripod.com/.

Thank you to our clients – we look forward to a successful 2012!

Over 200 planners were on the call today to hear Wayne, Nancy, and our president and co-found Frank Perlmutter outline the hot topics facing business continuity professionals working in banking and other financial industries.Highlights included a breakdown of FFIEC examination trends, risk and compliance issues, and the impact of the Dodd-Frank Act.

If you attended the webinar and have any questions or comments, please respond on this thread.

Thanks also to DRJ for helping us facilitate this discussion.

Webinar Description
As financial institutions continue to be mired in public criticism and cope with stringent oversight not seen in decades, business continuity has become more demanding and vital than ever. Financial Services Business Continuity Professionals need to prepare their organizations to be resilient and compliant, ready to resume operations in the face of any outage, and ready to illustrate to regulators that the plans and processes behind developing their BC is sound.

This webinar will address the complex challenges of the Financial Services Business Continuity Professional. An expert panel has been assembled to discuss the most pressing issues in this industry and to answer your questions. Learn about the hot topics from financial BCP experts Wayne Stadnik, VP of Business Continuity at TCF Bank, Nancy Valente, Global Business Continuity Manager at De Lage Landen, and Frank Perlmutter, co-founder and president of Strategic BCP and a former COOP/Risk Manager at the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

Discussion points will include FFIEC examination trends, risk and compliance issues, the drive towards objective impact ratings, and the impact of the Dodd-Frank Act.

IMPORTANT: If you have topics you would like discussed or questions you would like answered regarding BCP for financial services, please email them to contact@strategicbcp.com by the close of business on Friday, November 11. We will address these according to attendee demand.

Please join us for what will be a critical webinar. Any BC professional can benefit from this discussion, as many issues we will be dissecting are ubiquitous challenges across the entire BC industry. Following the webinar a discussion group will be created to provide a continuing dialogue for all attendees.

Register Here: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/422292306

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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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.

Ease-of-Use Reigns Supreme

Over 70% of respondents indicated that ease-of-use is their software’s strongest feature, and over 80% of respondents named ease-of-use in their list of the top three most important items needed in BCP software.

Our Take: We view software as easy to use if the planner’s customers – the people using the plans – can quickly and efficiently deploy the plans. But we realize that “ease of use” is a relative term, so we asked people to explain what it means to them.

To summarize, most respondents suggested that BCP software is easy if:

• “[The] user interface is intuitive such that end-users do not have to undergo detailed training to use the product.”
• “[It can be] understood and used by a C-level executive during an event.”
• “[It is] intuitive to use so that when there’s a disaster, it doesn’t require constant training just to understand how to use the system.”
• “Major training isn’t necessary to get users to build and maintain their plans.”
• “Non-BC users who don’t use the tool often can go in and figure out what they have to do with simple screens and tasks.”

Essential Software Features

Below are the top three essential software features, according to survey respondents.

• Having a single database for all plan components, with no importing/exporting between modules being required.
• Business process mapping capability.
• Data gathering methodology does not lock user into long surveys (i.e. a non-cumbersome approach is used).

Our Take: Modules defeat the purpose of utilizing automated software because there is significant manual configuration needed to make them work. Paying for separate modules can also be very expensive. We’ve seen a shift over the last year in BC planners’ approach to software.

While many planners in the past have focused on the technical side of software, partly due to more companies hosting it internally, planners today are focusing on software’s business implications. Using software to do the heavy lifting – mapping business processes objectively to determine risk points instead of through surveys – allows BC planners to be more effective – and more valuable.

And who really wants to take a long survey to begin with?

Moving Towards the Cloud?

56% of respondents said that they would prefer their software to be hosted by their BCP vendor.  When asked why, responses included “we’re more comfortable with SaaS,” “we don’t want to manage the software,” “it’s easier to have it hosted elsewhere,” and “this will hopefully be better during a crisis.”

Our Take: A large number of people would still prefer to host their software in-house but more are leaning toward external hosting in the cloud. We call ourselves “the leader in BCP cloud software” for a reason – we believe that hosting your business continuity plans on the same servers that he plans are intended to get back online in case of an emergency is a potentially dangerous scenario.

If a disaster strikes and your internal servers hosting your BC plans are affected, how will you utilize those plans?

Support is Critical

76.4% of respondents said they want access to 24x7x365 support with unlimited ability to contact their vendor with any questions or issues, as opposed to paying a la carte for additional questions.

Our Take: We agree! Disasters seldom give warning, so we believe having the peace of mind in knowing that your BC plans will be available and secure is vital. Paying extra for support simply doesn’t make sense to us.

Making the Switch?

50% of the respondents said they were considering switching their BCP software. Reasons included:

• “We need a solution that starts with the BIA and Risk Assessments utilizing BIA – Business processes and the risk assessment following the list of risks that are defined.”
• “Looking for a more effective tool to manage plans and that is easier for our ‘People’ to use.”
• “Our current software is not flexible enough to accommodate specific customer needs.”

In response to this, we’re offering our trade-in program again – it’s back by popular demand. Switch to ResilienceONE® and you won’t pay a penny until your current software contract runs out.

If you’d like to speak to us about this offer or if you have any questions or comments about the survey, comment below or email us at contact@strategicbcp.com.

Register Here

Check back later today for a link to our slides!

Register Here

Over 600 people have registered for this webinar already. If you have difficulty presenting your true effectiveness as a BC professional beyond generating plans, you cannot miss this discussion.

Join Strategic BCP and fellow business continuity veterans as we reveal metrics that will “wow” your executives, strengthen your risk management skills, and increase your value to your organization.

We designed this webinar to take you from data collection through delivery. We are even taking it a step further and sharing metrics that our colleagues have used to extend their value beyond the traditional BC job description.

Topics You Will Hear Include:

Data Collection Doom: How to identify and avoid poor data collection methods and bad data that can cannot be analyzed.

Setting Goals for Executive Delivery: How to ask the right questions to align your BC metrics with what executives and business leaders care about most.

Giving Your Metrics Teeth: How to present your analysis and back-up your findings.

See Sample Reports: We’ll show actual reports with the metrics you need to impress your executives and show-off your value.

Examples of Practical Application: Hear directly from pros who use BC metrics to manage risk, spot vulnerabilities others in their organization cannot, and be a manager of overall business evolution.

Metrics are vital in our BC world. Don’t miss this expert discussion about how to use them to your full advantage as a valuable member of your organization.

Register Here

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.

During plan development, distribution for a BC professional can be an administrative nightmare, and tracking who gets what changes is the initial headache. Business continuity software can provide improved access to plans but you need to have an Internet connection or the in-house server/desktop where the plans reside.

With relational database BC software (i.e. not storing plans as documents) housed in the cloud, one should be able to quickly get access to the most current version of their plan – and even better- alter their plan (if needed) to accommodate the current event. In a crisis, real-time interactive updates can be disseminated right away to recovery teams.

However, we do suggest keeping backup plans in PDF form an on paper just in case the Internet is not available. We’re not saying that paper is dead – static files and paper serve as important contingencies if the preferred software method is not available.

If you have reservations about using software for BCP, please share with us below.

These shows are always a good indicator of where our industry stands. We’re anxious to hear your thoughts on the state of our industry or your opinions of these shows in the comments section!

Attendance: There seemed to be smaller attendance for both shows, but we’ve seen a decline over the past few years at trade shows in general. We can probably attribute most of this to the economic downturn.

Increase in “Vaporware”: We heard from many attendees that vendors are promising a lot when it comes to their software capabilities but are not delivering. The industry term for this has come to be known as “vaporware,” and we’ve heard it with increasing frequency in our daily interaction with fellow BC pros. (See our blog series about “What to Look For in Your BCP Software Vendor” which starts here.)

Strong Networking Opportunities: These events are known for bringing people together and offering tremendous networking opportunities, and they came through again in this regard. Having the entire industry in one place is always important, but we feel that people who attend these shows are genuinely interested in speaking with vendors and learning about new opportunities. It was great meeting everyone!

Emergency Notification Solutions Hot: There was a tremendous amount of traffic and interest around the emergency notification solution vendors such as Twenty First Century Communications. Strategic BCP is committed to working with companies like TFCC to make emergency notification a key part of business continuity plans at utilities, governments, educational institutions, and healthcare providers.

Need for Industry-Specific Software Tools: There were many attendees – especially in financial services, health insurance, and healthcare – that stressed the need for BCP software that addresses their respective verticals. This is something Strategic BCP’s executives and developers (who are BC planners themselves) have continued to improve over the years. Please contact us about the industries we serve and to discuss client references.

Business is Fairly Consistent: It seemed to attendees that business is somewhat consistent and that “the economy is coming back.” However, these were very general comments, and BC budgets are always being stretched. But we’re encouraged as we see a number of our clients in various industries begin to sustain economic growth.

Need for New Content: Many of the attendees we spoke with (and we agree) mentioned that they would like to see some fresh people, content, and discussions. We will be brainstorming with DRJ some new potential topics for these shows that address the needs and interests of our industry.

Again, if you have any thoughts or suggestions, please comment below.