There is a wealth of readily accessible published information on Business Continuity Planning. Most is written from the perspective of resilience or availability of technology or business infrastructure such as buildings or transport links. More recently, the emphasis has shifted to encompass the impact of terrorist acts or pandemic events. A new threat is emerging – and it is one with a modest risk of occurrence but a potentially dramatic impact. That impact may not disrupt an entire business or an entire building. It may, however, disable a mission critical business process.

This new threat is a consequence of the changes in economic outlook facing most businesses. In recent months, cost-saving programmes in many organisations have led to head-count reductions. In many instances, organisations will have been working to create a viable cost structure with an emphasis on sustaining core business processes.

Where skill sets are highly specialised, managers may have been faced with a limited set of options to achieve the required cost base. One example is the skills required to carry out the routine tasks of managing an in-house SWIFT environment. Changes, if not properly managed and controlled, can impact the integrity and delivery of SWIFTNet operations.

Organisations must now ensure that they adopt one of two approaches:

• Carry the cost of employing sufficient competent people to ensure that each mission critical process remains reliable and resilient in the face of the inevitable disruptions associated with illness and holidays.
• Take a strategic approach to outsourcing in processes where that option exists and use the consequent savings to fund cross training and human continuity planning in processes where no such option is available.
  In order to plan effectively, management must conduct their business continuity risk assessment in parallel with a skills audit and a succession plan. Once this exercise is complete, they will be in a position to plan any required changes to business and technology processes.

Competent management teams develop a risk based approach to business continuity planning. In some instances, the cost / risk / impact trade-off may increase the probability that an event compromises the functioning of a mission critical business process. If, for example, the ability to process international payments via SWIFT messages is disabled – even for a few hours, it can have a profound impact on the performance of the business.

Strategic Outsourcing
Outsourcing can be an emotive subject, especially when considering information security or employment issues. Working with highly specialised service providers on the strategic outsourcing of limited elements of the technology landscape can make good sense – from a number of perspectives, including:

• Cost
• Resilience
• Security

Examples which organisations should consider are:

• Hosting of thin-client mission critical applications;
• Hosting and provision of connectivity services (such as access to SWIFTNet);

Due Diligence

It is imperative that the team responsible for reviewing the provision of strategic outsourcing services place an emphasis on objective validation of the main parameters. With cost, for example, there may be a cost saving – if the team find a specialist in the provision of particular services with a transparent, no hidden extras, pricing policy. When it comes to resilience, the team must ensure that they deal with service providers who already have resilience engineered into their technology and human infrastructures. Security issues may need some thought – depending on the available network infrastructures and the monitoring and control processes implemented by service providers.

Strategic Outsourcing to specialist providers can be an excellent means of improving resilience in mission critical applications. SWIFT Service Bureaux are good examples of organisations with a firm grasp of the requirements of secure messaging. The best SWIFT Service Bureaux have already built human and technological resilience into their offerings and are able to help organisations save money whilst making a real improvement to the pragmatic elements of their business continuity plan.