In the dynamic world of business, the ability to adapt and respond to unexpected disruptions is crucial. Infinite Blue was founded to help organizations reach total enterprise resilience which, oftentimes, requires effective Business Continuity Planning (BCP). Our approach to BCP exercises is designed to validate plans and engage teams in a way that fosters a deep understanding of recovery roles and actionable improvements to ensure robust efficient recoveries.
Organizations relying too much on predictable BCP exercises, like tabletops, risk missing new threats that could harm their recovery. These repetitive scenarios don’t encourage thinking beyond daily routines or recognizing changes that might hinder recovery. Infinite Blue’s external perspectives are crucial as internal employees may overlook existing processes and weaknesses. Infinite Blue’s Advisory Services offer fresh insights, identifying risks and inefficiencies that internal teams may miss. By using our services, organizations can improve resilience and ensure a thorough assessment of their recovery strategies. Adapting tabletop exercises with an outside perspective to reflect current and potential risks is essential for robust resilience.
Producing engaging BCP scenarios
The key to a successful BCP exercise lies in the scenario’s design—it must be fresh, relevant, and plausible:
- Fresh: To encourage participant engagement, we move beyond overused scenarios like fires or power outages and instead craft unique situations that challenge teams to think outside the box.
- Relevant: Our scenarios are tailored to the specific context of your business, ensuring that they resonate with your operational environment and provoke critical thinking for enhanced recoverability.
- Plausible: We create scenarios within the realm of possibility, avoiding far-fetched events that hinder immersion and understanding of the exercise’s implications.
A case study in innovation
We recently partnered with a major manufacturer that had previously conducted exercises that failed to bring meaningful changes to their recovery plans. We made it our mission to create a scenario that would have a plant-wide impact and involve all departments.
After thorough analysis and collaboration with the client’s BC project and plant managers, we developed a scenario involving an outage at the plant’s local Data Center. This scenario was not only fresh and relevant, highlighting the increasing dependency on IT infrastructure but also plausible, considering the Data Center’s proximity to potential hazards.
The exercise in action
The exercise brought together representatives from all recovery groups, fostering a collaborative environment where new critical gaps were identified. The realization that an impact on the plant could shut down surrounding facilities underscored the need for a holistic outage and recovery perspective with contingency actions and manual workarounds.