Business Continuity Management Specialist Andrew Hiles has said Pakistan should review reports on different aspects of October 8 disaster and begin to put in place infrastructure to deal with the existing situation and prepare itself to face similar eventualities in the future.
Hiles is founding director of Kingswell, UK-based Business Continuity global consulting and training specialist. He was in Pakistan for six days to conduct a training programme organised by ICIL, Pakistan's premier credit risk provider on business continuity management. His training programme held at a local hotel concluded on Saturday.
Hiles was of the views that handling of the disaster with limited resources is a difficult job and even in most advanced countries immediate response is not always sufficient, as the response to disaster from emergency teams picks up slowly.
He said: "I think Pakistan might consider preparation for a disaster management plan and begin with training people in dealing with emergencies."
Hiles said that under the existing constraints there is need to optimise on the available resources and arrange all needs of the affected people in order of priority. But training of personnel in management and use of resources would be indispensable to make the plan effective.
He appreciated the response from within Pakistan and abroad, and said it is 'incredibly high.' The relief commissioner has received generous donation in cash and in kind. It is now to be utilised properly in a planned manner.
Talking about the training programme, conducted in Pakistan, Hiles expressed satisfaction over the enthusiasm in people to learn new techniques to bail out their business from situation of crisis.
He said that every business faces potential threat that if they were to occur could hamper the operations of the company. Threats could include building fire, failure of key IT systems, floods, key personnel not being able to get work could have serious impact on the business.
Explaining it further, Hiles said that business continuity management is a holistic management process that identifies potential impacts that threaten an organisation, provides a framework for building resilience and provides capability of an effective response. It includes management disciplines, processes and strategies to ensure that critical business functions continue to operate in the event of any unforeseen disruption.
He said that in every business there are critical areas for which there needs to be contingency plan so that those operations are up and running following an unforeseen incident. On the other hand, there are areas that will critical to the overall success of the business would have a lower recovery priority.
He said that advantages of business continuity management could be gauged from the strength it provides to a business concern.
An efficiently implemented business continuity management programme ensures that all risks are evaluated and properly managed and the critical business functions are identified through an impact analysis.
Once identified a strategy for their continuity through a disruption can be developed supported by a set of clear, comprehensive business continuity strategy. Then as the business changes, the strategy is reassessed through periodic risk and impact analysis.
The discussion during the training programme focused on risk management, business impact analysis, business continuity and disaster recovery planning, disaster recovery planning, service management, service level agreements, information security and integrity, help desk and customer support and training.
ICIL is credit risk provider. Besides credit granting support services and credit risk management services, it is also providing specialised business training, business continuity management and a range of anti-money laundering solutions.
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