Emerging Best Practices: Business Continuity Planning

Craig Babcock, Business Continuity Planning Manager, Procter & Gamble

What & Why

Three billion times a day, P&G brands touch the lives of people around the world. The job of Business Continuity Planning (BCP) is to make sure this can continue. One of the focus areas of the Product Supply organization is to achieve industry leading base service reliability everyday and everywhere. With this in mind, BCP must have the capability in place to continue critical business operations in the event of a business interruption anywhere in the world.

Organization Structure

BCP is carried out by a small global staff with a network of practitioners at every site and nearly every function. The central staff has resources for office operations, supply chain operations and IT continuity. A Community of Practice leadership group of senior Corporate IT, Internal Audit, Security, Safety, Engineering, and Manufacturing managers provides guidance and oversight.

Process

The initial process was developed by benchmarking top companies, insurance providers, and professional organizations doing loss prevention work. The process has been updated bi-annually, with the current version producing a harmonized system across the company, including current best approaches from acquisitions. The BCP process has the following steps: (a) determining the length of time a function or a site can be down before it impacts the business; (b) an analysis of the likelihood and severity of a litany of risk scenarios and an assessment of the risk management system health; (c) a review of the IT continuity capability; (d) contingency plans created for high risk scenarios; (e) a crisis management system in place; (f) approval of the plans by leadership; (g) annual testing of the plan; (h) maintenance, training, and keeping the plan “alive.”

Scope

The BCP program includes the following: every manufacturing site, every major office and technical facility, every critical function, every critical material, key distribution centers, and key contract manufacturers.

Results

As a global company with a presence in 80 countries, P&G has experienced a number of situations that have tested our BCP including: SARS in the Far East; war in the Middle East; IT issues in the US and Europe; hurricanes, floods, and tornados in the US; and tsunamis’ and earthquakes in the Pacific Rim, to name a few. Since formalizing the BCP program, the company has experienced little, if any impact, to our consumers. Even when our Folgers coffee was off the shelf due to Hurricane Katrina, our coffee manufacturing was the first major business back in operation, and a case study on effective resumption capability.

Opportunities

The effort to keep up with all the critical material suppliers can be a challenge. The company is developing an end-to-end BCP for the product supply part of our business which would allow P&G to holistically prepare for issues, be more agile, and support our supplier partners.