There’s no doubt that training in business continuity planning and management is an investment. And as such, organisations are justified in insisting on a return. It’s not just the financial expense of a course, travel and so on, but also the time spent away from one’s normal professional activities. So any training course in business continuity needs to pay attention to ways in which attendees and their organisations can quantify their ROI.
Firstly, there is the possibility of avoiding damage and losses due to business interruption. A quick calculation is often sufficient to estimate how much a business loses per hour or per day if it cannot function. In different sectors, this will be calculated in various ways: a manufacturing enterprise that can move members of its workforce to other production lines may not be in the same boat as a financial company constantly trading in the financial markets.
Secondly, there is the cost of implementing business continuity. Part of business continuity training course should cover the cost/benefit ratio to be determined before finally deciding on a course of action. As the DRI Professional Practices point out, a million dollar strategy to protect $100,000 of business is not a viable approach. A good training course can also show how to optimise expenditure on business continuity to select the option in any given situation that gives the most benefit for the least cost.
Last, but by no means least, are the opportunities for the trained BC practitioner to make business continuity show a profit by using it to identify opportunities for different departments to share facilities instead of insisting on each having its own. Alternatively, BC planning because it cuts across all departments can often help to eliminate redundant processes between departments and make money by cutting costs. And as the saying goes, “a dollar saved is a dollar earned”.