Key Supplier Resilience as part of Business Continuity Management

It is not enough just to look at the resilience strategies for within your organization, the entire supply chain needs to be considered for your critical business functions.

Are you reliant on a single supplier for any key products or services?

If you have alternate suppliers, are they geographically separate or in other ways diverse from your primary supplier? If your primary supplier was affected by a problem, how likely is it this backup supplier would be too?

Can you build the requirement for these suppliers to have robust and verified business continuity in place for themselves into your supply agreements?

What are your workarounds and strategies if supply of these products or services were cut-off?

All of these questions should be examined as part of a robust business impact analysis of your critical business functions. Having a BCP is more than just a tick in the box for your audit report. It is about having confidence in your organization’s resilience.  What a great selling feature for your clients, if you can confidently state you’ve got a mature and resilient organization that will stay in operation when others may fail!