WHAT DOES A BUSINESS CONTINUITY MANAGER DO?
The Business Continuity Manager ensures robust planning and implementation of business continuity strategies aligned with ISO standards, covering roles, responsibilities, and competencies. This role develops a comprehensive, prioritized roadmap for the Business Continuity Planning program, ensuring phased roll-outs and seamless integration with enterprise resilience efforts. Through collaboration with key stakeholders and the D&T organization, the manager advances policies, tools, and methodologies that enhance the organization’s resilience and technology recovery capabilities.
A Review of Professional Skills and Functions for Business Continuity Manager
1. Business Continuity Manager Duties
- Relationship Management: Develop and manage relationships with CoEs for implementing BCP.
- Collaboration: Work closely with the IT & Logistics team on a complete BCP/DRP solution.
- Compliance: Ensure 100% CTQ compliance on BCP preparedness across sites.
- Audit Management: Work on Audits and follow-ups on BCP preparedness.
- Training: Conduct training and awareness sessions.
- Issue Resolution: Be a senior partner concern point for resolving customer & internal issues.
- Customer Relations: Maintain & grow excellent customer relations.
- Innovation: Bring in external perspectives and evolving practices in operational processes.
- Duty of Care: Ensure all colleagues have access to expert advice & assistance before, during, and after business travel, meeting the companies' Duty of Care requirements.
- BIA Management: Support the completion of all BIAs annually alongside IT Service Continuity.
2. VP Business Continuity Manager Details
- Risk Management: Act as a trusted risk advisor to the senior management in the region.
- Policy Development: Create frameworks, policies, and procedures in line with global regulations on operational resiliency.
- Project Coordination: Assist in the coordination of planning and implementation of processes across different businesses.
- Resiliency Oversight: Provide ongoing resiliency oversight support, key resiliency metrics reporting for various governance bodies globally and regionally.
- Collaboration: Collaborate with other business units to provide business resiliency oversight.
- Incident Management: Provide advice on corporate incident management response.
- Risk Culture: Facilitate embedding of risk management culture and supporting global team projects.
- Expertise in Continuity: Act as a subject matter expert in the business continuity and disaster recovery programme and provide consultation on these matters globally.
- Compliance Management: Maintain awareness of current legal/compliance requirements for the division’s plans and standards and interpret and apply principles to remain in compliance.
- Team Management: Oversee and manage the team responsibility to successfully achieve business objectives.
3. Business Continuity Manager Responsibilities
- Leadership: Drive commitment, support, ownership, accountability, and results for Business Continuity in the Asia-Pacific region.
- Culture Development: Foster a culture of resilience through education and training of regional management.
- Analysis: Proactively engage in the identification, prioritization, and documentation of critical business functions through ongoing Business Impact Analysis.
- Plan Testing: Validate and test Business Recovery Plans and communicate results to leadership.
- Training Facilitation: Facilitate Incident Management training and testing with regional Incident Management Teams.
- Incident Response: Lead the response to, and management of, disruptive incidents in line with the existing Incident Management program.
- Support Availability: Provide off-hour, on-call Incident Management support.
- Strategy Design: Identify and partner with the business to design and implement Business Recovery strategies that mitigate or reduce disruption impact on Nike’s Asia-Pacific region.
4. Business Continuity Manager Job Summary
- Exercise Coordination: Develop, manage, and coordinate tabletop exercises, live testing, and other recovery exercises.
- Readiness Preparation: Help prepare for a continuous state of readiness by validating plans and training personnel associated with responding to a business disruption.
- Reporting: Report on exercise results and follow-up on issue resolutions.
- On-Call Support: Participate in ‘on-call’ manager duties in support of the BCM program.
- Leadership: Lead the delivery of Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity controls across Group IT and business units.
- Third-Party Management: Manage and interact with third parties when delivering Technology Resilience and recovery.
- Incident Coordination: Coordinate technical response to major IT incidents (cloud, network, data, etc.) and act appropriately to the recovery using Disaster Recovery measures.
- Team Support: Support application teams and suppliers as they implement measures.
- Compliance Assurance: Ensure compliance with control requirements on testing and exercising and the status of process risks.
- Functional Management: Be responsible for running the functions, including Governance, Strategy, Policies, Standards, Testing and Exercising, Cyber Recovery, and ITDR.
5. Business Continuity Manager Accountabilities
- Policy Review: Ongoing review and maintenance of group policies and standards aligned to ISO22301:2019, outlining industry best practices.
- Accreditation Leadership: Drive elements of the business to achieve ISO22301 accreditation.
- Process Ownership: Maintain and own the Business Impact Analysis review process, producing the relevant documentation.
- Risk Identification: Identify risks associated with organizational practices through assessments and reporting on these risks.
- System Maintenance: Maintain the systems used for Critical Business Processes identification and categorization.
- Plan Development: Create and maintain the BC/DR Plans for critical Business Processes across the group.
- Strategy Support: Support and implement the Resilience strategies for Peak events
- Team Support: Support the Organizational Resilience team in driving Resilience across the group.
- Awareness Building: Ensure awareness, knowledge, and preparedness through workshops and relationship building.
- Team Management: Manage, train, and exercise Incident Management Teams to validate the plan.
6. Business Continuity Manager Functions
- Risk Coordination: Coordinate and synergize with Operational Risk Management where appropriate.
- Incident Coordination: Provide overall coordination during an actual incident to ensure compliance with processes, timely resolution, and minimal business disruption.
- Event Monitoring: Provide continuous monitoring of disruptive events that could potentially impact the Company’s business operations due to nature, man-made, or technology-related disruptions.
- Exercise Ownership: Own the exercise testing schedule for Business Continuity Plans to validate compliance with Business Continuity Standards.
- Audit Governance: Govern the internal and external audit process from the resilience perspective.
- KPI Development: Establish KPIs to demonstrate the continual progress of the BCMS.
- BCMS Management: Manage the continual evolution of the BCMS using the output from testing, corrective action, and stakeholder feedback.
- Contact Point: Be the point of contact for Business Continuity and Resilience.
- Compliance Assurance: Ensure overall compliance across the group with the Risk and Resilience Policy.
- Certification Support: Provide support to obtain and maintain Resilience Certification across group functions.
7. Business Continuity Manager Overview
- Expectation Setting: Define business continuity planning expectations, including roles, responsibilities, and competencies.
- Program Development: Develop a prioritized Business Continuity Planning program roadmap and phased roll-out plan.
- Collaborative Planning: Work in partnership with Enterprise Resilience efforts and the broader Resilience lifecycle of Prepare, Detect, Respond, and Recover.
- Stakeholder Engagement: Gain alignment with key stakeholders and business leaders on appropriate business continuity processes and tools.
- Methodology Support: Support a standardized risk and impact evaluation methodology and risk control strategies across the enterprise.
- Advisory Role: Advise program sponsors and appropriate committees/leaders on programs, risks, and mitigation strategies related to continuity of operations.
- Collaboration: Integrate strong collaboration, partnership, and influence with the D&T organization for the Technology Recovery program.
- Operations Management: Manage operations related to Business Continuity Planning tool(s) and vendor(s).
- Policy Development: Develop and maintain policies, procedures, and processes related to the business continuity program.
- Initiative Leadership: Drive key initiatives in support of progressing team capabilities.
8. Business Continuity Manager Tasks
- Strategy Support: Support the maintenance of the Group BC Strategy & Policy in line with significant Threat, Risk & Organisational changes.
- Stakeholder Engagement: Support the BC awareness, understanding, and engagement of Senior Stakeholders in the Business Continuity Programme.
- Incident Response: Be available to support the Head of BC in leading the business response to a Serious Incident or Crisis and deputise.
- Operational Support: Support the Head of BC as required in ensuring that BC operational procedures and plans are effective, up-to-date, rehearsed, and meet Governance requirements in full.
- Crisis Planning: Support the Head of BC with the successful planning for/responding to foreseeable incidents that significantly interrupt trade and operations across the business.
- Risk Management: Support the maintenance of the Group BC Risk Register.
- Capability Improvement: Support the assessment and improvement of BC Capability.
- Training Delivery: Provide store management teams with appropriate duty management training and support tools.
- Program Delivery: Deliver an ongoing Continuity CM & BR Training Programme across the Group through Exercising, Desktop Awareness, & Training Tools e.g., E-Learning.
- Facility Testing: Deliver the testing of all National & International Work Area Recovery Facilities (WARF) on an annual basis with appropriate business areas.
9. Business Continuity Manager Roles
- Program Development: Develop further HL’s existing Business Continuity Management program to ensure it aligns with ISO22301.
- Crisis Support: Support the Crisis Management Team in the event of a major incident or crisis and deputise for the Group Business Continuity Manager.
- Impact Analysis: Engage with business areas to perform the annual Business Impact Analysis, determining the impact on the business, and challenge the results to ensure they are consistent with business requirements and Operational Resilience outputs.
- Plan Maintenance: Ensure that Crisis Management and Business Continuity plans, procedures, playbooks, and standards are up to date, effective, and rehearsed.
- Improvement Framework: Develop a framework for continuous improvement.
- Tool Management: Manage the Business Continuity tool, ensuring that it is used effectively across the business.
- Horizon Scanning: Provide regular horizon scanning and engage across the business to plan for disruptive events which may result in high levels of contact with HL, ensuring minimum disruption to clients.
- Testing Oversight: Plan, oversee, and report on the program of testing across the business.
- Metrics Development: Develop further the metrics for Business Continuity and report these to the relevant internal committees.
10. Business Continuity Manager Additional Details
- Safety Coordination: Coordinate the project’s safe management and response measures.
- Stakeholder Communication: Ensure accurate communication between various stakeholders (internal/external).
- COVID Safety Support: Support the project team to maintain a COVID-safe worksite, workforce, accommodation, and transportation.
- Reporting: Routinely report to and participate in the project team’s Covid-19 Working Group on updates and issues arising for all COVID-related matters.
- Compliance Improvement: Identify and introduce improvements to the joint venture’s COVID compliance system.
- Transition Management: In the post-COVID working environment, implement a flexible transition to business as usual.
- Additional Roles: Take on other functions within the joint venture’s project management team.
- Training and Coaching: Provide ongoing training and coaching to both senior stakeholders and a network of Business Continuity Champions.
- Continuity Application: Ensure that they can apply Business Continuity processes for their areas in a practical and pragmatic way.
- Client Support: Support the facilitation of responses to client questions, tenders, and due diligence surveys.