Business continuity consulting: a plan tested before you need it
No one has ever tested what happens if the main system goes down on a Monday at 9 a.m. We identify critical processes, analyze the impact of a disruption, and define response and recovery plans so operations don't stop.
What does business continuity consulting do?
It defines how the company keeps operating when something critical fails. It starts from a business impact analysis (BIA) that identifies which processes are indispensable and how much damage each hour without them causes; from there come the recovery targets (RTO and RPO), the business continuity plan (BCP) and the disaster recovery plan (DRP). The plan belongs to leadership, not only to the IT department.
BIA
Which processes are critical, which systems and people they depend on, and how long each can be down.
Measurable targets
RTO: maximum time to recover a service. RPO: how much data can be lost. They are set with leadership, not with the vendor.
Public references
ISO 22301 is the international standard for business continuity management systems; NIST SP 800-34 describes the BIA and the plan types (BCP, DRP). They serve as references; certification is not mandatory.
From impact analysis to the drill.
01Business impact analysis (BIA)
Critical processes, dependencies, impact per hour of disruption and recovery priority.
02Continuity strategies
How each critical process keeps running while the system is recovered: manual alternatives, alternate sites or services, backups.
03Business continuity plan (BCP)
Who decides, who communicates, what happens in the first hours and how normal operations resume.
04Disaster recovery plan (DRP)
The technical part: which systems are restored, in what order, with which backups and who executes it.
05Drill and adjustment
An exercise with a real scenario before the plan is considered finished, and the calendar to repeat it.
06Solution selection
If the plan requires backup, high availability or an alternate site, we choose vendors with defined criteria and no vendor commissions.
A business continuity plan defines how the organization keeps operating when something critical fails: a system, a supplier, a site or a key person. It is not an IT document: it is a leadership decision about which processes cannot stop and how much the company is willing to invest so they don't.
That is why we start with the business impact analysis (BIA). According to NIST SP 800-34, the BIA correlates each system with the business processes it supports and, based on that, characterizes the consequences of a disruption. From there come two measurable targets: the RTO, the maximum time a resource can remain unavailable before there is an unacceptable impact, and the RPO, the point in time to which data can be recovered after an outage.
With the targets defined, the continuity strategies and the disaster recovery plan (DRP) are designed: which systems are restored, in what order, with which backups and who decides. The same guide distinguishes the business continuity plan (BCP), focused on sustaining business processes during and after a disruption, from the DRP, focused on restoring information systems.
In our view, the most frequent mistake is having a plan that has never been tested. A drill with a real scenario — the ERP goes down on a Monday at 9 a.m. — shows in hours what a document doesn't show in months: who didn't know they had to decide, which backup didn't restore, and which vendor didn't answer.
ISO 22301:2019 is the international reference for business continuity management systems: a framework to plan, implement, operate, review and improve a documented management system that protects the organization from disruptive incidents and ensures recovery. Not every company needs to certify, but every company needs a plan that holds up to that logic. If the plan requires new backup, high-availability or alternate-site solutions, we select them with our infrastructure consulting, with no vendor commissions, and Project Management governs the implementation.
Continuity rests on infrastructure
Before writing the plan, read this
Frequently asked questions about business continuity consulting
When the operation depends on one or two systems and no one has tested what happens if they go down; when a customer, a bank or a regulator asks for the continuity plan; when the company migrated critical infrastructure to the cloud and the old plan no longer applies; or when a plan exists on paper but has never been rehearsed.
According to NIST SP 800-34, the business continuity plan focuses on sustaining business processes during and after a disruption; the DRP is an information-system-focused plan to restore systems, usually at an alternate site, after a major disruption; and a system's contingency plan describes how to assess and recover that specific system. The BCP belongs to leadership; the DRP and contingency plans to IT; all three must be coordinated.
The business impact analysis correlates each system with the processes it supports and characterizes the consequences of a disruption. It leaves three results: which processes are critical and how long they tolerate being down, which resources are needed to recover them, and in what order they are recovered.
The RTO (Recovery Time Objective) is the maximum time a resource can remain unavailable before causing an unacceptable impact on the processes it supports. The RPO (Recovery Point Objective) is the point in time, prior to the outage, to which data can be recovered with the latest backup; it measures how much data loss the process tolerates. Leadership sets them with the business, not the vendor.
It is not mandatory. ISO 22301:2019 is the international standard for business continuity management systems and serves as a reference to structure the plan; certifying makes sense when a customer or the sector requires it. Our service defines and tests the plan; if the company decides to certify, the plan is built with that logic.
If the plan requires backup, high availability, an alternate site or cloud, we select the solutions with our infrastructure consulting, with no vendor commissions, and Project Management (PMO) governs the implementation.
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