Most organizations are aware of the existence of specialist business continuity consultants, but many are unclear on exactly what we do. BC consultants can help with everything from conducting assessments and facilitating exercises to preparing for audits, developing recovery strategies, and serving as a company’s outsourced BC office.
Related: Client’s Guide to Hiring a BC Consultant
Summary
What can BC consultants do to help their clients?
For the most part, anything the client wants that relates to improving continuity and strengthening the organization’s resilience.
At least that’s our approach at MHA, and I believe it’s the same at the other leading BC consultancies.
We provide as much or as little assistance as the client desires.
Why might a client company wish to engage a firm like ours?
Because organizations without robust business continuity and resilience programs are vulnerable to costly operational disruptions, cyber incidents, supply chain failures, and other crises that can threaten revenue, reputation, and customer trust. Our consultants bring decades of proven experience helping organizations, from small nonprofits to Fortune 100 corporations, across virtually every industry worldwide, build resilient operations that reduce risk, strengthen preparedness, and accelerate recovery when disruptions occur.
Whatever your issue is, we’ve almost certainly been there and done that.
We have the tools, the templates, the methodology, and the benchmark data.
From the outset, we know the most likely threats confronting organizations in different industries and in different physical locations. We’ll also have a pretty good idea of which impact categories are most important for organizations in different fields, whether it’s healthcare, banking, retail, manufacturing, or anything else.
We know technology and the many wrinkles that accompany contemporary IT disaster recovery (IT/DR) in our era of hybrid computing environments, third-party SaaS providers, and cloud-based data storage.
We’re also well-versed in navigating the many human challenges that crop up in BC, whether it’s gaining management support, securing the cooperation of the business units, achieving alignment between BC and the IT department, facilitating mock-disaster exercises, or staffing a crisis management team.
And unlike AI, we don’t hallucinate or flatter, and our insights are based on real understanding, not computer party tricks.
Hiring outside expertise is an investment, but in most cases a skilled BC consultancy saves time, stress, and confusion while helping organizations avoid costly mistakes and enabling them to focus on their core business.
Above all, it helps the organization improve its ability to shrug off or quickly bounce back from disruptions, minimizing their impact and expense. This is so whether disruption affects the company’s people, processes, or technology and whether it was caused by cyberattack, extreme weather, supply-chain breakdown, social-media firestorm, or whatever it might be.
Here are eight ways hiring a BC consultancy can make your organization more resilient:
It’s virtually a prerequisite to a successful consulting engagement: The first thing you have to know before hiring a BC expert is what exactly you want them to do. Vagueness on this score is one of the most common causes of a strained relationship and spiraling costs.
A well-defined scope keeps the project focused, prevents costs from escalating, and ensures everyone shares the same expectations. Some companies know precisely what they want the consultant to do. Most have only a rough idea.
Defining the scope of an engagement requires knowledge of the company’s current continuity position and of BC methodology. BC consultants can help with this task, even if the main work is to be done by another firm.
Many company BC practitioners are capable and well trained but have limited hands-on experience in certain areas. An experienced BC consultant can pinch-hit for them in areas where they are unsure while also providing them with training on the fly.
Sometimes the organization’s BC office is perfectly capable of doing whatever work needs to be done, the only problem is they lack the time. A consultant can take some of the load off their shoulders, quickly executing assigned tasks while following the organization’s overall strategy.
Some organizations know for a fact that they want a solid BC program, but they’d prefer to get someone from outside to set it up and manage it. They’d rather focus on their core business.
For these companies, a BC consultancy can be their BC office, performing all the functions that would normally be performed by an in-house BC team. MHA provides this service for a number of organizations.
For an annual retainer the client gets a prescribed slate of services and access to our experienced continuity professionals, without the expense of maintaining a full-time internal team.
Organizations often bring in consultants to perform an independent assessment of their BC program before an audit, regulatory review, customer review, or executive presentation.
An objective evaluation helps identify strengths, expose weaknesses, identify residual risks, and prioritize improvements, allowing gaps to be addressed or mitigation plans made before the assessment that really counts takes place.
Designing and running mock-disaster exercises is vital for validating recovery plans and training participants. It is also a job that is hard to do well without experience.
Facilitating an exercise is uniquely challenging, requiring as it does the ability to keep the event on schedule, create a sense of urgency, manage personality clashes, encourage participation, and extract meaningful insights from the hubbub.
There’s a lot at stake in most exercises due to the number of people brought in to participate. An experienced outside facilitator can help make sure your exercise is a success.
Some organizations retain consultants to assist during actual incidents. An experienced advisor can help establish structure, facilitate crisis management meetings, guide executive decision-making, coordinate documentation, and keep the response organized while internal leaders concentrate on managing the event itself.
Increasingly, customers, insurers, regulators, and business partners want to be sure that the organizations they rely on have the ability to recover from disruptions quickly.
Consultants can help develop documentation, conduct assessments, and validate continuity capabilities, showing stakeholders that the organization takes resilience seriously and can be relied on as a supplier or partner.
Whether you need strategic guidance, additional bandwidth, or hands-on support during a crisis, the right BC consultant can help your organization become more resilient while saving time and effort and avoiding costly mistakes.
Business continuity consulting is not a single service but a broad range of services designed to help organizations strengthen their resilience. Depending on your needs, a consultant can help define the scope of a project, supplement your internal staff, fill knowledge gaps, facilitate exercises, support response efforts during a crisis, prepare for audits, validate your program, or even serve as your outsourced BC office.
An experienced consultant brings practical knowledge, proven methodologies, tested templates, and lessons learned from working with organizations across many industries. These strengths can help your organization avoid common pitfalls, accelerate progress, and build a stronger, more resilient business continuity program.
MHA Consulting has been helping organizations strengthen their business continuity, disaster recovery, and crisis management capabilities for more than two decades. Whether you need assistance with a single project or ongoing support for your BC program, contact MHA to learn how our experienced consultants can help your organization become better prepared for whatever comes next.
An experienced BC consultant can help strengthen your organization’s resilience in many ways, depending on your needs. Consultants can assist with defining project scope, conducting assessments, filling knowledge gaps, augmenting internal staff, facilitating disaster exercises, supporting crisis response, preparing for audits, validating continuity capabilities, or even serving as your outsourced BC office.
Defining the scope of a consulting engagement is one of the most important steps in ensuring a successful project. An experienced BC consultant can help you assess your organization’s current level of preparedness, identify your objectives, determine which activities will deliver the greatest value, and develop a clear statement of work. A well-defined scope helps keep projects focused, controls costs, and ensures everyone has the same expectations.
Business continuity consultants provide a wide range of services. They can conduct business impact analyses and resilience assessments, develop recovery strategies and continuity plans, facilitate tabletop and disaster recovery exercises, prepare organizations for audits, provide crisis management support during actual incidents, supplement existing BC staff, validate program effectiveness, or manage an organization’s entire BC program on an outsourced basis. The specific services depend on the organization’s goals and maturity.
Yes. Many organizations engage BC consultants before regulatory reviews, compliance audits, or customer assessments. An independent review can identify strengths, uncover weaknesses, and prioritize corrective actions before the formal audit takes place. This gives organizations an opportunity to address gaps, strengthen documentation, and improve their readiness.
Yes. Many prospective customers want assurance that their suppliers can continue operating through disruptions. A BC consultant can perform an independent assessment of your business continuity program, evaluate your resilience capabilities, and help document your preparedness. While no consultant can guarantee future performance, an independent review can provide customers with greater confidence that your organization has taken appropriate steps to prepare for operational disruptions.