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For Immediate Release

November 4, 2002

 

Business Continuity Plans Bolster Threat Deterrence and Risk Reduction in the Supply Chain

 

 

November 4, 2002. Raleigh, North Carolina.  Glenn Newkirk, President of InfoSENTRY Services, addressed participants at North Carolina State University’s October 28-30, 2002 conference on Synchronizing the Supply Chain.  Newkirk’s topic, Business Continuity and the Supply Chain, highlighted the re-globalization of markets and the challenge of ensuring the continuity of complex, integrated supply chains against threats of the 21^st Century.

 

”Identifying the potential technological, environment, and human threats are the first steps to threat and risk reduction in supply chains,” said Newkirk. “The plan must be a synchronized process that includes all supply chain members.  Addressing how the supply chain will reduce and remedy threats is critical.”

 

Newkirk explains, ”What is needed today is not simply a business contingency plan that has separate links in the chain being responsible for “disaster recovery” or “contingency” planning.  Reacting to contingencies is no longer sufficient.  It must be a business continuity plan. Continuity that spans the WHOLE supply chain is required.”

 

Newkirk notes that business continuity plans for the supply chain are expensive because of the number of members in today’s organizations’ supply chains.  Business continuity plans have to include ALL enterprise resource planning (ERP) and legacy applications within an organization as well as those of ALL of its suppliers, and its suppliers’ suppliers.  Newkirk emphasized that though creating a plan and testing the plan is a massive undertaking, it needs to be done. He suggested that conducting desk checks and “walk-through test scenarios” with players in the supply chain are ways to test the plan and minimize the cost.

 

“Testing the plan is crucial,” Newkirk explains,” If you don’t have a plan, you have just had your first disaster.  If you have never tested the plan, that is your second disaster.  When the technological, environmental, or human disaster occurs, that’s when you have had your third disaster and will be able to calculate the costs of your first two disasters.”

 

“There are no failed business continuity plans, only failure to test those plans,” Newkirk contended.

 

Newkirk ended his presentation with reference to a statement by President Dwight D. Eisenhower: ”No battle plan has ever survived the first shot fired in the battle. But the process of preparing the battle plan is indispensable to winning the war.”

 

Organizations who prepare and test their business continuity plans will understand why Eisenhower thought the process of preparing is so crucial to success.

InfoSENTRY was founded in 1994 as an information systems consulting and technology project management firm with a special expertise in project assessment, project management, project recovery, information security and information recovery. InfoSENTRY Services, Inc. has no financial relationships or business partners with hardware, software, or consulting firms, allowing it a unique independent perspective to evaluate information technology issues. Glenn Newkirk is a Certified Business Continuity Planner.

 

 

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