Best Practice/Benchmarking

Goal: Designed as a cost-effective way to measure the completeness of a business continuity program, this service called Exemplar 9 provides an analysis of your program’s capabilities from 9 different perspectives, comparing the key components of the target program to those found in exemplary programs across the country.  

Unlike checklists that provide a raw score, this service includes a personalized review by our industry-certified consultants with a detailed narrative and personal readout describing your program’s strong and weak points, noting any gaps and inconsistencies and their financial impacts.  For any key elements that that are sub-optimal in your program or do not exist, Exemplar 9 provides a development sequence, identifying prioritized activities that need to be performed to mature your current capability into an integrated enterprise-wide business continuity program."

 

Deliverables: Exemplar 9 provides answers to the following questions with appropriate supporting detail:

• Does your process provide an optimal flow, from the warning stage through emergency response and business recovery until business is "back to normal"?
• Is your Emergency Response Team organized effectively, ensuring that key personnel will be used efficiently, with no duplication of responsibilities? This includes examining the roles of life-safety team members, initial damage assessment teams, and business recovery teams.
• Have you established emergency policies relating to all human factors that will impact the business following a disaster?
• Will information flow efficiently through your Emergency Operations Center? This includes examining your reporting structures, communication tools, and tracking systems.
• Do your departmental business recovery plans comprehend the interdependencies necessary to protect the critical functions required to sustain the business during the initial 21-day window following a disaster?
• Do your telecommunications and system recovery strategies match your departmental recovery priorities?
• Does the structure of your documentation ensure that information will be easy to use, and readily available?
• Does your employee education program enable proper execution of your plan?
• Do your program maintenance elements ensure a constant state of readiness?

DSPN consultants recommend and implement best practices in business continuity, crisis management, emergency management, Continuity of Government (COG) and Continuity of Operations (COOP). Because they are not affiliated with the manufacturers of any hardware or software products, they can objectively describe how a given program measures against others. With minimal time spent by the client, DSPN can develop recommendations that take into account the specific cultural and business needs of a client, at a fraction of the cost to hire less-experienced reviewers.