Best Business Continuity Management (BCM) Software 2021
How much downtime would your business rack up if your office building lost power for a day? Businesses without a disaster plan are doomed to fail, with 93 percent of them who suffer a data disaster going out of business within a year. Business continuity management is critical for preventing downtime due to natural disasters, ransomware, or power loss.
Business continuity management overview
What is Business Continuity Management?
Business continuity management (BCM) is a set of processes that covers disaster recovery, incident response, crisis management, and other issues that could disrupt business operations to prevent the loss of data and productivity. Organizations often build and store these processes in business continuity management software. BCM is also mandatory for many industries, including financial services and healthcare.
Also read: Make Incident Response Planning Easy with this Free Template
What Should Business Continuity Management Cover?
Business continuity management should cover anything that could reasonably cause downtime or major harm for your business. Some of these scenarios include:
- Power loss
- Natural disaster
- Internet outage
- Data breach
- Global pandemic
While some of these are clearly more serious than others, all will impact your employees’ ability to perform their job functions. Plus, they may put your customers at risk, depending on your organization’s industry. For example, a power outage could endanger lives in a hospital without a proper backup plan.
The plan your business creates should include an overview of all the critical processes your organization has, as well as a prioritized list of risks it faces. It should also include mitigation activities for each of those risk scenarios. As you test your business continuity plans, you should add reports that display new vulnerabilities, so you can update plans and processes over time.
Also read: IoT Adds Complicated Layer to Risk Management
To find the best business continuity management software for your organization, check out these tools. Each of them has great customer reviews and full feature sets.
Oracle Risk Management Cloud
Pros
- Speeds up compliance fixes
- Organizations can create rules to reduce false positives
- Is customizable to meet a business’s needs as they change over time
Cons
- The interface isn’t very efficient without improvements
- There isn’t much variety in the reporting options
iGrafx
Pros
- Good usability makes it easier for adoption across multiple departments
- Keeps process knowledge accurate and up to date
- Easy to automate process maps and share them with leadership
Cons
- Some users have had difficulty integrating it with other tools
- The program can sometimes lag, even with simple processes
Fusion Framework System
Pros
- Consolidates key elements of incident response and crisis management for better visibility
- New features become available with frequent updates
- The platform is very flexible to fit different businesses’ needs
Cons
- No option for live chat support
- The learning curve can be fairly steep
SAI360
Pros
- Helpful solution right out of the box while still allowing for configuration
- Support staff offers personalized attention to solve issues or answer questions
- User-friendly reporting and dashboard features
Cons
- The support team for small projects seems to be under-resourced leading to long wait times
- Training seems to be skewed towards an English-speaking audience, so users that speak other languages may struggle a bit
Castellan Software
Pros
- The interface is user-friendly and easy to understand
- Technical support is helpful and responsive
- Reporting is fast and provides critical information
Cons
- The platform isn’t as customizable as some of the others on this list
- Some users have had trouble with SSO on the mobile application
BC in the Cloud
Pros
- Easy and intuitive to use right out of the box
- The features are scalable and customizable
- The implementation team is helpful and customer support is very responsive
Cons
- Requires some level of coding knowledge to get the most out of the tool
- Advanced reporting capabilities are limited
Archer Business Resiliency
Pros
- The workflows are customizable and give businesses full control over their procedures
- Offers a lot of detailed information
- Useful for tracking and storing audit results
Cons
- The UI is not completely user-friendly
- Requires some coding knowledge to fully utilize all of the features
RPX by RecoveryPlanner
Pros
- The support team is helpful and clearly wants to solve issues
- Training helps teams determine the best ways to use the software
- Customizable to meet different business requirements
Cons
- Not all of the features are available through the mobile application
- Some customers have experienced slow load times and glitches in the program
Read next: Disaster Recovery Across Hybrid Cloud Infrastructures