- Wins in key categories for Singapore companies confirms dominance in the region
- Poll of conference attendees shows 29% have not implemented a business continuity plan

SINGAPORE – November 07, 2007 – Business Continuity Planning Asia (BCP Asia) Pte Ltd announced the winners of the region’s first Asia Business Continuity Awards at the 7th Annual Business Continuity Management Conference (BCMC) in Singapore.

The event, endorsed by the Business Continuity Institute (BCI) marked the launch of the Asia Business Continuity Awards, which honours individuals who have made exceptional contributions to the industry as well as vendors in three categories: recovery sites, BCP-related software and group excellence.

With nominations from around the region, the Asia Business Continuity Awards recognized Asian companies and the regional offices of non-Asian companies for their excellence in business continuity.

In the individual category, the winner of the Business Continuity Manager of the Year was Angus A. Graham from Nestle GLOBE Center AOA in Australia and the Lifetime Achievement award was given to Kenny Seow from Contingency Solutions in Australia.

For the Business Continuity Provider of the Year (Recovery Site), the winner was Singapore Computer Systems (SCS) while HP Singapore and IBM in Singapore were the runner’s-up, recognized for their contributions to the business continuity and recovery industry.

The Business Continuity Management Software of the Year award was conferred to COOP Systems in Australia with Strohl Systems from Singapore as the runner-up.

The Group Excellence in Business Continuity Management was presented to DBS in Singapore for their comprehensive implementation of a business continuity plan and integrating the business continuity practice as a fundamental part of their business. The runner-up in this category was SingTel.

“The high levels of proficiency among the nominations we received for the very first Asia Business Continuity Awards is testament to the increasing importance of business continuity in their industry and around the region,” said Henry Ee, Director, Business Continuity Planning Asia Pte Ltd. “I am very heartened by the response and look forward to expanding the number of categories for future awards,” he added.

The winners of the Group Excellence in Business Continuity award, DBS, highlighted the need for organizations to build resiliency into their business operations and equally, to build resiliency into their human capital.

“While the business continuity plan takes care of the physical aspects of our business, our staffs’ safety is one of our highest priorities,” said Grace Tan, Vice President of Technology & Operations at the Corporate Business Continuity Management section of DBS. “We achieve human capital resiliency by addressing the people-related components of business continuity planning – and in our case, it involves having an emergency response guideline”.

Nominations for the 2nd Asia Business Continuity Awards will open in April 2008.

BCP Asia launches examination for professional membership

BCP Asia will launch a five-day training course with the examination for professional membership, endorsed by BCI UK across all major cities in Asia in the first quarter of 2008. Titled ‘Understanding BCM Principles and Good Practice’, successfully passing the exam professionally qualifies participants in Asia Pacific as either:

ABCI - Associate of Business Continuity Institute and is granted to those with less than one year of experience or
MBCI – Member of Business Continuity Institute, granted to those with more than two years of experience in a relevant field.

Survey: 55% of respondents have not tested their business continuity plan
BCP Asia conducted a poll with the conference attendees to gauge their levels of business continuity plan development and preparedness. In the survey:

• Only 27% admitted to suffering a loss due to a disaster or crisis with the most recent incident being six to 12 months go
• 59% of the visitors were in locally owned companies
• 70% of all their attendees have never suffered a loss due to a crisis
• 55% have not tested their business continuity plan in the last six months
• Key outcomes from a business continuity plan are:
o Protecting the company’s assets
o Identifying the impact of potential losses
o Having assisted recovery in the event of a disaster
• 34% of the participants were in the Banking and Financial Services industry and
• 48% had more than 1000 employees