Could the Crisis Response to Iceland's Hekla Volcanic Eruption Have Been Better Managed?

ABU DHABI, EAU, April 28, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- The recent volcanic eruption in Iceland has been the most significant incident that has had the biggest impact on the travel and aviation sector since 911. Once the dust has settled (please excuse the pun), people will be asking questions about what could have been done differently to limit the commercial impact.

The conduct and ongoing management of Business Impact Analysis (BIA) is both critical and foundational to achieving a robust Business Continuity Management (BCM) programme that protects the organization through adverse operating conditions and avoids Disaster.

Typically business impact analysis is conducted as a process-driven approach that assesses an organisation's business processes to determine their criticality, the resources they rely on and the potential impact their disruption may have on the organization; however, from a practical perspective, this approach is only suitable for organisations with a small set of critical processes and simple dependencies. Complex organisations can have hundreds of business processes, making this approach both costly and difficult or near impossible to conduct.

International organisations could benefit from a more value-driven business impact analysis. Strategic consultants Boartes are taking the lead in development of value driven business impact analysis. They have developed a more successful approach that considers the organisation from an 'enterprise' perspective by identifying the value-generating activities. Defined business processes are mapped according to their value-generating activities into the "Value Chain" to determine criticality. Boartes has extensively applied this approach successfully to conduct BIA in complex organisations.

This approach to business impact analysis allows individual business functions to be analysed according to their criticality and contribution to the organisation's Vision and Mission. This is achieved through the quantification of the effect of business disruption on critical process within the Organisation's 'Value Chain'; further, Interdependencies are captured within the "Value Chain" to allow each business function to be correctly prioritized based on their collective contribution and associated impact of loss.

Guy Peterson, an international Boartes Business Continuity Management expert, stated that "Conducting a Business Impact Analysis is a critical step in the business continuity planning process, which ensures an organisation correctly responds to incident or disaster with planned levels of disruption; however, traditional approaches to conducting BIA often fail due to the complexity of today's operating environment ... the 'Value Chain' approach to BIA allows organisations to capture operating complexity with a simple model that can be rapidly deployed and easily managed."

The issues relating to BIA and other strategies for mitigation and control of disaster and crisis response risk will be discussed at the Disaster Management and Crisis Response Middle East event. During this industry leading four day event regional and international thought leaders will gather on 23 -26 May 2010 at Le Royal Meridien, Abu Dhabi to highlight the importance of national emergency management and the strategies required to create unified plans. Disaster Management and Crisis Response will help you to identify effective disaster management systems that strengthen preparedness and response capabilities.

Take the opportunity to discuss BIA and other approaches with experts from Boartes, NCEMA, Abu Dhabi Emergency & Public Safety Department, London Ambulance Service, UNDP, King Abdul Aziz Medical City, World Food Program, Ras Gas and many others.

To learn more about the latest within crisis management visit http://www.disasterandcrisisresponse.me or email [email protected] for more information.

    For more information please contact -

    Michaela Heidenfelder
    Marketing Manager
    IQPC Middle East FZ LLC
    Block 11 Office #111
    Knowledge Village
    PO Box 502397
    Dubai, United Arab Emirates
    Tel: +971-4-4331420
    Fax: +971-4-363-1925
    Web: http://www.iqpc.ae

SOURCE IQPC Middle East