Business Continuity Consulting & BCM Program Support
Attainium provides business continuity consulting services that help organizations design, strengthen, and maintain Business Continuity Management (BCM) programs that stand up to real disruptions and operational pressure. Our consulting work covers program development, Business Impact Analysis (BIA), risk and hazard assessments, cyber and IT recovery planning, plan updates, and exercises, ensuring your continuity strategy is practical, coordinated, and ready to use when it counts.
The consulting services outlined below are designed to support and strengthen your Business Continuity Management (BCM) program.
Training and awareness are an important part of an effective BCM program. Attainium helps organizations strengthen staff readiness through targeted education, practical guidance, and exercises that build confidence in how the business continuity plan is understood and used.
Consulting helps organizations design and strengthen their continuity program, while Plan-A-ware helps sustain readiness over time, and Tabletop Exercises help validate readiness under pressure.
Business Continuity Management (BCM) Program Support
Effective resilience requires more than a single document. Our consulting services support the full Business Continuity Management (BCM) lifecycle: understanding your risks, mapping critical functions, developing and updating plans, exercising them, and aligning recovery expectations with leadership and IT. We help you connect business continuity, disaster recovery (DR), cyber incident response, and crisis communications into a single, coordinated program.
For many clients, we combine consulting with our Plan-A-ware environment and Tabletop Exercises, ensuring plans are not only well-designed but also maintained, tested, and practical to use when it counts.
Business Continuity Plan Development
The Business Continuity Plan provides your organization with the structure and guidance needed to respond to disruption and resume operations. Through our Plan-A-ware approach, the BCP identifies the leadership, staff, and response actions needed to support coordinated response and recovery, including the following key components:
For a structured self-review of your existing plan, see our Business Continuity Plan Checklist (Updated 2025).
Crisis Management
The success of the Business Continuity Plan and your organization's recovery from a disaster will rest on the key individuals selected to carry out the actions listed in this plan. Proper identification and training of these individuals are critical. The ownership of the BCP rests on the individuals selected to serve on the Crisis Management Team. For practical insights into how teams coordinate under pressure, see How Can a Tabletop Exercise Improve Your Business Continuity Plan?
Emergency Response
The actions your Emergency Response Team must take will be detailed, both for those responsible for activating the Business Continuity Plan and those responsible for business operations during times of disaster. We assess the suitability of a wide range of disaster response procedures, including evacuation protocols, fire safety regulations, and health and safety protocols. Looking to strengthen emergency procedures? Our article Business Continuity Plan Checklist highlights essential roles, communication paths, and responsibilities.
Crisis Communications
Crisis management can be understood as everything your organization does during a disruption to respond promptly and effectively. These actions, developed through business continuity planning, help reduce potential impacts to operations, reputation, and stakeholder relationships. Each incident still requires assessment and judgment to determine how the plan should be applied. For additional communication-focused guidance, explore Top 6 Effective Tabletop Exercise Scenarios for Business Continuity, including situations that test public messaging and internal coordination.
Business Resumption
Immediately following a disaster or crisis, your Business Resumption Team and stakeholders must know how to begin recovery. Should your organization's physical premises be affected by a disaster, individuals involved in business resumption procedures must act quickly to restore normal operations (repairs, access, leases, etc.). In addition to this information, specific decision-making procedures must be in place to quickly authorize repairs (if the space is owned) or to contact individuals to perform the repairs (if the space is leased). You can also review our Why Your Business Continuity Plan May Need Shaping Up for insights on improving operational readiness.
Employee Well-Being
We will incorporate the immeasurably important human side of Business Continuity Planning. In the knowledge-based economy we live and work in today, the value of the employee has never been greater. Employees' experiences and knowledge give organizations their unique value and the promise of business success. In addition, it is employees who will assist the organization in recovering from any disaster or business disruption.
Actively recruiting individuals to serve on the Crisis Management Team, educating them about their role and impact during a disaster, and ensuring that all employees are aware of the potential risks they and the organization face are critical success factors in any Business Continuity Plan.
IT Infrastructure and the Cloud
A summary of your existing IT and cloud recovery capabilities will be documented, including on-premises infrastructure, cloud platforms, and key SaaS applications. This includes backup and recovery procedures, recovery time and recovery point objectives (RTO/RPO), identity and access controls (such as SSO and MFA), and dependencies across networks, vendors, and third-party services. We also review off-site, cloud, and immutable backup arrangements to ensure they support both cyber incident response and business continuity objectives.
Where appropriate, we align this work with your cyber playbooks so incident response, IT disaster recovery, and business continuity are coordinated rather than siloed. For organizations building or refining their cyber plans, we often reference resources from our Cyber Incident Hub to validate the first 24 hours of response and recovery decisions.
Many organizations now operate in cloud-based or hybrid environments. We evaluate backup strategies, SaaS dependencies, cyber recovery capabilities, and alignment between business needs and IT recovery objectives.
Cyber Incident, Response, and Recovery Planning
Many business continuity gaps show up first during a cyber incident, not a natural disaster. As part of our consulting services, we can review how your continuity plans align with incident response activities, including detection, containment, communication, and IT recovery. This includes validating that your cyber plans and IT runbooks support safe containment, evidence preservation, and realistic recovery timelines for critical business services.
We can also help you apply the first 24 hours guidance from our Cyber Incident Hub to your environment, so executives and technical teams have a shared playbook when something goes wrong.
Risk and Business Impact Analysis
Attainium will assess the criticality of your organization's business processes and determine the impact and consequences of loss of service or a reduction in normal customer service levels. Key Business Processes are those that, under any circumstances, could not be outsourced to a third-party vendor or organization. To strengthen your impact analysis assumptions, we recommend reviewing What Assumptions Will Guide Your Continuity Planning?
The analysis will contain information on the threats to normal service levels and the impact on profitability and continued viability. This section outlines the key business areas and assesses the risks associated with each business process.
Areas to be considered include:
- Customer/Member communications
- Other online real-time customer services
- Service delivery processes
- Quality control mechanisms
- Customer service handling
- Maintenance and support services
- Sales and sales administration
- Finance and accounting
- Human resources management
- Information technology services
- Premises/facilities
- Marketing and public relations
Readiness Assessment
Senior management and leadership support are critical to a Business Continuity Plan's success, as with any organizational project. We begin by interviewing your leadership, staff, key suppliers, and building managers to provide the information necessary to evaluate your organization's readiness for a disaster.
The evaluation continues with a review of your policies and procedures relating to the areas under investigation, such as evacuation plans, the documentation provided by your building manager, server backup procedures, organizational/management structure, etc. For a high-level overview of readiness evaluation, see What Should You Be Doing Now to Prepare for the Next Crisis?
Our research and assessment of your organization's readiness include these crucial functions and more:
- Leadership support and commitment
- Delivery of service to customers
- Technology
- Building and infrastructure
- Operations
- Human Resources and Communications
- Crisis Management
- Organizational Mission
- Crucial Business Functions and Key Business Processes
Ongoing Business Continuity Plan Maintenance
A Business Continuity Plan never exercised is a Business Continuity Plan never implemented. Employees must be familiar with all the aspects of the plan. Through thorough maintenance, your organization ensures the resources and solutions contained in the BCP are current and appropriate to your everyday, real-life risks and potential disasters. We will work with your organization to determine an appropriate maintenance schedule.
Exercises That Validate Organizational Readiness
Exercises are a core component of effective resilience programs. Organizations use structured exercises to validate coordination, leadership decision-making, and response readiness across operational and executive teams.
Business Continuity Exercises
Business continuity exercises validate cross-functional coordination during operational disruption and test how continuity plans perform under real-world decision pressure.
Learn more about how organizations conduct Business Continuity Exercises
Crisis Management Tabletop Exercises
Crisis management tabletop exercises focus on executive decision-making, escalation management, and stakeholder coordination during high-consequence events.
Learn more about Crisis Management Tabletop Exercises for executive decision-making
Exercises are most effective when they are aligned with a broader Business Continuity Management (BCM) program that defines recovery priorities, escalation paths, and leadership responsibilities.
Training and Awareness Programs
Attainium develops and conducts comprehensive education programs for your leadership and employees. While the BCP is important, it is only effective when everyone affected is aware of the valuable information it contains. The initial education of employees should take place after the completion and approval of the Business Continuity Plan and continue regularly over time as a refresher for current employees and as part of new employee orientation. To improve staff engagement during training, explore 5 Tips to Improve Your Next Tabletop Exercise.
Consulting Services: FAQs
What types of business continuity consulting does Attainium provide?
- We provide consulting across the full Business Continuity Management (BCM) lifecycle, including program development, readiness assessments, Business Impact Analysis (BIA), risk and hazard reviews, plan development, plan updates, and improvement projects following audits or exercises.
How is consulting different from Plan-A-ware?
- Consulting delivers expert guidance, assessments, and hands-on support for your BCM program. Plan-A-ware adds the structure and environment needed to keep your plans updated, accessible, and aligned over time. Many organizations engage consulting to strengthen their program and then use Plan-A-ware for ongoing continuity management.
Can Attainium help us update or modernize an outdated continuity plan?
- Yes. We frequently update outdated or incomplete continuity plans, streamlining structure, improving clarity, confirming dependencies, aligning with current operations, and removing legacy content. We ensure the final plan is actionable and aligned with your real-world risks and priorities.
Do you conduct Business Impact Analyses (BIA) and risk assessments?
- Yes. We can perform full BIAs, streamlined BIAs, department workshops, or targeted reviews focused on critical functions, tolerances, recovery dependencies, and single points of failure. We can also conduct risk and hazard analyses aligned with ISO 22301.
Can consulting engagements prepare us for audits or regulatory requirements?
- Absolutely. We help organizations prepare for internal audits, regulatory reviews, and client/vendor assessments by validating documentation, aligning processes with BCM standards, and identifying gaps before evaluation.
Is consulting available as a one-time project or ongoing support?
- Both. Some clients bring us in for a specific project (such as updating a plan or running a BIA), while others use us as ongoing BCM advisors. You can scale engagement up or down depending on where you are in your program.
How do consulting services support our overall BCM program?
- Consulting strengthens your BCM foundation by clarifying risks, mapping critical functions, tightening roles and responsibilities, identifying dependencies, and improving the accuracy of your plans. This ensures your continuity strategies are realistic, prioritized, and aligned across technology, operations, and leadership.
