Creating an effective business continuity program is a big lift for everyone, but for small BC teams it can seem almost impossible: most simply lack the time and resources required to accurately assess their programs and master the BC standards. BCMMetrics’ Compliance Confidence can help even the smallest BC offices identify and close their most significant gaps, improving compliance and enhancing resilience.
Related: FFIEC: An Introduction to BCM’s Gold Standard]
Most organizations struggle when it comes to bringing their continuity programs into alignment with the standards and satisfying the BC-related requirements of regulators, auditors, and customers. For companies with small or one-person BC offices, getting a handle on compliance can be overwhelming.
For slender BC teams, time and resources are always in short supply. These limitations make three of the greatest challenges in BC that much more difficult to solve. These include: understanding the language and requirements of the relevant BC standard(s); gaining a clear picture of the program’s strengths and gaps; and knowing which gaps require urgent attention and which can safely be deferred.
Let’s take a moment to talk about those standards.
The leading business continuity standards—such as FFIEC, NFPA 1600, and ISO 22301—are invaluable for any organization that wants to be able to avoid or recover quickly from disruptions. They represent the collective wisdom of a large number of seasoned professionals who have helped organizations navigate some of the toughest operational disruptions imaginable. Developed and refined over time, they distill decades of experience into a shared understanding of what’s needed to build resilience and safeguard critical operations.
But for all their value, the standards have their limitations. Most are long, technical, and filled with broad directives requiring significant interpretation. They tell you what you should have in terms of program elements, but they rarely tell you how to develop those elements or which pieces are most critical to implement first.
What the standards conspicuously lack is a roadmap, an indication of what’s urgent versus what is merely a good idea. It’s up to each organization to translate the standards into action.
For organizations with big BC teams and external advisors, working through that complexity is challenging but manageable. For small BC offices, it can feel like trying to do a crossword with a blindfold on.
Without a structured way to interpret the standards and assess their current position, many small teams get stuck. They know they have work to do—but not what kind of work, how much of it, or where to begin.
That’s where a tool like our Compliance Confidence can make all the difference.
Compliance Confidence (or “C2”) is one of four tools in the BCMMetrics suite, our cloud-based platform for managing BC programs from end to end. The suite was originally developed for use by MHA Consulting in carrying out BC engagements with our clients. We still use it every day in working with organizations in a broad array of industries and of all sizes, from small companies to Fortune 500 corporations.
This history is reflected in BCMMetrics’ design and operation, which emphasizes lean functionality over bells and whistles. Unlike many competing platforms, ours was made by BC practitioners for practitioners.
C2 focuses specifically on compliance and program maturity. It helps organizations evaluate their business continuity program against any or all of the leading standards, using a guided, structured assessment.
And unlike a generic checklist or spreadsheet, it doesn’t just tally what you’ve done—it evaluates how well your program aligns across such key areas as governance and program administration, business impact analysis (BIA), IT/disaster recovery, business recovery, crisis management, training and exercises, and maintenance.
When you complete the assessment, C2 gives you a color-coded score and places your program on MHA’s Enterprise Maturity Scale: Reactive (0-40), Organized (41-60), Responsive (61–80), or Resilient (81–100). You also get a detailed breakdown of strengths and gaps in every domain.
Here’s where C2 really shows its worth. It knows all gaps are not equally significant. Each area is weighted based on its real-world impact on recoverability, as determined by MHA’s consultants. When the tool flags a gap, it also tags it with a level of importance (high, medium, low) so you know where to put it on your to-do list. You always know which deficiencies are critical and which can wait.
In other words, C2 doesn’t just give you a list, it gives you a roadmap.
For smaller teams, the value of Compliance Confidence lies in three words: focus, clarity, and confidence.
Focus, because it helps you pinpoint where your biggest opportunities for improvement lie. Instead of trying to address everything at once (or guessing where to start), you can concentrate on the high-impact areas that matter most to your program’s recoverability.
Clarity, because it shows you exactly how your program aligns with standards—not just overall, but down to each specific component, whether it’s exercises, training, maintenance, or IT recovery. That’s important to know, especially when resources are limited.
And confidence, because the tool reflects the knowledge and judgment of our consulting team. And MHA has been in the business of helping organizations of all sizes, in just about every industry, continue their mission-critical operations in the face of disruptions for over 25 years.
Those are just a few of the ways C2 benefits small teams. Others include detailed tracking of compliance tasks and ownership, predictive modeling that shows how your score will improve as you complete actions, built-in reporting tools to help communicate progress and readiness, and historical data so you can demonstrate improvement over time (essential during audits).
For small teams, C2 provides the insight and guidance they need to move forward with confidence.
Small BC teams face steep challenges in meeting continuity standards. In many cases, their lack of resources—combined with the intrinsic difficulty of assessing a BC program and the density and passivity of the standards—can create a perfect storm of confusion, leaving the team exhausted and the company exposed.
Compliance Confidence was designed to solve that problem. By offering structured assessments, prioritized gap identification, and a guided path forward, C2 helps small teams make smart use of limited resources and deliver vital protection to their organizations and stakeholders.
If you’re part of a small BC office looking to gain traction and show results, we’d love to talk. Reach out to MHA to learn more about how Compliance Confidence can help you bring your program into alignment and achieve meaningful progress.