Business Continuity For Dummies

Chapter 15

Using Business Continuity with Professional Services Firms

In This Chapter

Assessing professional firms and BC

Focusing on essential aspects of professional firms

We design this chapter for small, professional service firms. All the general business continuity (BC) information and advice that we give throughout this book is applicable to these companies too, but here we concentrate on focusing BC to suit the specific characteristics of these businesses.

Instead of dealing with a tangible product and maintaining a series of processes or business functions – for example, as with manufacturing or retailing – professional firms are more likely to offer a service or skill. This difference doesn’t mean that BC is redundant to such firms, however. On the contrary, as a professional firm you rely heavily on your reputation for delivering these services, and so being able to continue the critical activities that underpin them during a crisis is essential.

As we describe in this chapter, the main concerns for the professional firm are effective, reliable communication, availability of key staff and premises, the backing-up of vital documents and contracts, and maintaining a consistent service even through a disruption. Protecting client confidentiality and making sure that you ...