Your organisation has changed and you are finding that the current “paper-based” planning methodology no longer is fit for purpose. 

If you recognise any of the following items familiar, it may be time to invest in a business continuity software planning solution:

 1.       Are your plans hard to maintain and have numerous areas for updates?

2.       Would the volume of updates and changes be better suited to the functionality of a relational database?

3.       Does your organisation have numerous Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery stakeholders that are required to provide input and updates to the plans?

4.       Is the import of your Business Impact Analysis (BIA) information a manual process taking significant time and effort to complete?

5.       Is it difficult to provide granular reporting to Senior Management and auditors?

6.       Is additional plan security required?

7.       Are some sections of the plans “off limits” to certain groups or business units?

8.       Is Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery exercising and training difficult to organise and complete?

9.       Does your current plan require greater geographical coverage for your branch offices?

10.   Are updates completed in a scheduled manner (or 1 week prior to an audit or test)?

If you answered “Yes” to any of these questions, odds are that a more sophisticated Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery planning tool may be of use to the maintenance and health of your management program.

The best part is that this is not a “throw the baby out with the bathwater” scenario.  Some of the better planning tools allow for the import of completed planning data directly into the software tool, retaining all of your previously completed hard work .

Time spent evaluating a Business Continuity / Disaster Recovery software planning tool may benefit your constantly changing and evolving plans and be of great value to your organisation.