Anyone can write a business continuity plan. In fact that’s the easy bit. And it’s very easy to make the business continuity plan look very convincing. Some names and contact details, a few checklists and a bit of blurb at the start about how seriously we take business continuity within our organisation can work wonders.

But it’s also very easy to write a business continuity plan with no substance to it. One that essentially says “we’ll get a few key people together at the time and make it up as we go along”! There are any number of plans in existence that basically say this.

But what about the underpinning strategies and solutions? What’s in place to ensure that we can actually meet our continuity objectives when, heaven forbid, we might have to invoke our plans for real?

The plan is one thing but the strategies and solutions (not to mention the testing and exercising and awareness and education and ongoing review and maintenance) that turn a plan into a capability are quite another.

You can make the plan look as pretty as you like, but if the underlying strategies and solutions or assumptions are flawed it’s really just a cosmetic exercise.

To quote a chap who has a lot of experience in the business continuity industry, as well as an interesting turn of phrase, “it doesn’t matter how much perfume you put on a pig, at the end of the day it’s still a pig!”