Many companies use business continuity software to create, support, maintain, distribute and test their continuity plans and ensure business survival in any emergency. No matter the size of a company, it can benefit greatly from the use of business continuity software and many options exist for its implementation and plan maintenance strategies. There are many direct benefits this type of software can provide a business such as provide prompt notification to employees in case of calamity about what specific actions to take according to corporate protocol. Also, the software can distribute continuity plans to each business unit for training, testing and other implementation events. It also provides document format questionnaires to ensure thorough analysis and response planning and applies relational database structures to manage plan updates very quickly and efficiently. It also keeps the documentation active to synchronize it with interfacing applications. For instance, it can automatically update a plan emergency contact list that that has employees latest contact information when the corporate employee database changes.
Business continuity software can provide for risk and business impact assessment tools, plan-building tools, databases and collaborative planning tools, emergency notification and incident management tools. A number of vendors offer integrated modules that you can choose from. A company's continuity plan project may require only one or all types, depending on its current level business continuity maturity and the features and scope of its proposed plan. By using the tools that business continuity software provides, even first-timers can take advantage of the planning techniques of experienced business continuity planners.
Since most software is implemented using a project management methodology, your firm will likely identify the budget, timelines, people resources, and other such constraints. It is also important to think about technical requirements. For example, your company may prefer to let the vendor host the software or they may prefer to maintain it on their own servers. You also have to determine what database platforms your company supports such as Oracle, SQL Server, etc. Also, find out how fast your companies end-user computers are and what operating systems they run. These and other technical requirements can be gathered by consulting your information technology department.
More important still are the business requirements. Identifying all of the stakeholders who will need to use the tool - from end users to administrators to upper management - is essential. If you do not consult with your users and document their needs for the software, it can cause many problems later. Any necessities you did not gather will come back in the form of complaints and endless change requests. Keep in mind; most people are more likely to accept a new piece of business continuity software if they have been involved in rolling it out.
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