Organisations around the world have been the victims of all sorts of disruptions. Over the years, man-made and natural disasters have unveiled the vulnerability of businesses on a global scale.

Business continuity management (BCM) capabilities enable organisations to restore their businesses to normal operations following an unanticipated disaster or business interruption. To date, however, the corporate BCM capabilities necessary to establish that resiliency generally have ranged from absent to insufficient. The purpose of this tool is to help provide finance and accounting managers with a foundation on which to further develop their BCM thinking, strategy and processes. The specific objectives are as follows:

•  To define BCM as a corporate capability and to identify its essential components and processes;
• To identify the drivers that make BCM a vital corporate and management competency in the 21st Century;
• To establish and define the roles and responsibilities that corporate managers and boards fulfil in developing effective BCM practices; and
• To present a step-by-step framework for developing and maintaining effective business continuity management processes.