Influenza Pandemic - How KPMG can help you protect your business operations

When KPMG China launched the recent Business Resilience in China study, the threat of a flu pandemic was not a high profile business priority - the situation has now changed dramatically. The key findings of the study indicated that employees felt they were not receiving sufficient business continuity and crisis management training. Having the right processes and programmes in place may count for nothing if staff is unaware of their roles and tasks in the event of a major disruption.

While the imminent threat of a major swine flu outbreak has lessened somewhat, it is still imperative to ensure your business has a business continuity management (BCM) programme in place.

KPMG's Risk Advisory Services (RAS) Business Resilience team is experienced in helping clients to prepare and review business continuity plans (BCP) and pandemic plans. For example:

• For a quasi-government organisation in Hong Kong - we assisted in reviewing existing BCM arrangements, preparing a BCP and integrating the Disaster Recovery Plan in the overall BCM framework. We also helped to conduct a desktop pandemic scenario simulation, helping them to validate their BCM preparations.
• For a city level banking association in Shanghai - we conducted BCM training for 30 multi-disciplinary staff from 20 local and foreign banks, including representatives from the People's Bank of China. We simulated an industry-wide event using a pandemic scenario, allowing the authority and individual banks to understand interdependencies in BCM.

If you would like advice on building continuity planning and preparations, please contact Ning Wright (click for contact details).

As the WHO Director-General, Dr Margaret Chan stated on 29 April, "No matter what the situation is, the international community should treat this as a window of opportunity to ramp up preparedness and response".