Deloitte has launched an online business continuity management benchmark survey. The survey and results, free to participants, allow individual companies to gauge and compare their recovery capabilities against their peers, and receive updated information on a regular basis to help them proactively manage their business continuity efforts.

The online database is updated as participants join, and reports are available on a monthly and quarterly basis as industry data is aggregated. Participating companies will receive a customised annual report comparing their responses to industry and geographic peers.

Rick Cudworth, Deloitte’s head of Business Continuity & Resilience, commented: “With the nature of global threats, a successful response depends on investment in protective measures by all. This survey offers organisations the ability to benchmark key processes - for free - against other major corporations and small-to-medium businesses across industries and around the globe. By making data in an area like business continuity planning and management more dynamic, up to date and readily available, enterprises all over the world will have the ability to benchmark themselves against other organisations in very important areas such as crisis management, leadership and governance, life safety, training, IT disaster recovery, facilities and infrastructure.”

The survey compares business continuity management programmes against key metrics, including:

- The maturity of business continuity and disaster recovery preparations;
- Staffing and organisational structure;
- Programme budgets;
- Recovery time objectives for most critical business processes.

“A company can use the BCM benchmarking data as a tool to respond to questions about its business continuity practices, regardless of whether the questions are raised by the board of directors, business units, or from external sources. Our goal is to keep the benchmark data current and relevant. Viewing this data should be a key tool in every organisation’s overall business continuity strategic planning process. Some may want to see updated benchmarks every month; others may prefer only an annual comparison. In any case, there is great power in having frequently updated information at a manager’s fingertips.”