Business Continuity Planning (BCP) is challenging enough for a single organisation—but when you’re dealing with a corporate group made up of multiple subsidiaries or acquired businesses, the complexity multiplies. Different IT systems, varying levels of centralisation, overlapping services, and brands of unequal strategic importance all make continuity planning a daunting task.
We help organisations like this regularly, and there’s a clear route through it. The key lies in perspective.
Most organisations instinctively approach BCP at the brand level. Each business or subsidiary creates its own continuity plan, often duplicating effort and missing the bigger picture. While this might satisfy individual compliance requirements, it rarely delivers true continuity for the group as a whole.
Instead, start from a group-level perspective. Why? Because continuity risk isn’t about brand names—it’s about the services the group provides to its stakeholders. If two brands deliver the same service, planning separately is inefficient. In a real-world scenario, if one brand fails but another can pick up the load, the group remains resilient. That’s what matters.
Alternatively, some groups choose to focus only on the shared services they provide to business units—such as HR, payroll, finance, and IT—rather than trying to create a unified plan across all brands. This approach can make things much more straightforward, but it comes with a caveat: individual business units won’t have continuity plans of their own and would need to develop these independently. For large groups with highly autonomous subsidiaries, this model can work well. For others, it risks leaving gaps.
Before diving into details, define what continuity risk means for the group. Ask:
This step sets the scope. It helps you prioritise strategically important services and avoid wasting time on areas that don’t materially affect the group’s ability to operate.
Once you know the group’s impact tolerance, map out:
Focus on services, not brands. This avoids duplication and ensures you’re planning for what really matters.
Under each service, identify the functions that deliver it. At this stage, brand names are irrelevant. What matters is understanding the operational building blocks.
In many professional services groups, the biggest continuity risks boil down to IT concentration and staff dependency. However, for organisations with physical operations—such as manufacturers, logistics providers, or healthcare groups—infrastructure risks can be just as critical.
Ask:
This ensures the plan is tailored to the organisation’s operational reality.
Once you’ve established group-level priorities, there’s scope to develop brand-level or function-level continuity plans—and in many cases, you’ll need to for compliance or client requirements.
The key is this:
Those plans must align with the group’s priorities, not the brand’s own perception of importance.
Why? Because individual brands will naturally consider themselves more critical than the group might. If each brand plans in isolation, you risk duplication, wasted effort, and—most importantly—plans that don’t support the group’s ability to maintain service continuity.
By anchoring brand-level planning to the group’s recovery priorities:
Here’s the process in summary:
Approaching BCP from a group perspective makes the project manageable, avoids duplication, and focuses on what truly matters: maintaining service continuity for the organisation as a whole. For some groups, that means prioritising IT resilience; for others, it means addressing physical infrastructure vulnerabilities alongside technology and people.
If your group organisation is wrestling with continuity planning, start by asking: What really matters to the group? The answer will guide everything else.