A revolution in business continuity planning software was officially launched at the Emergency Planning Society’s Annual Conference held recently in Torquay. Brellion’s Impact Aware software claims to bring drag and drop ease of use functionality to business continuity planning software. ImpactAware is a software application that is used to model organisational dependencies and will allow business continuity practitioners to produce business continuity plans in a fraction of the time it currently takes.

Brellion’s Ben Mann told us: “Impact Aware has been designed to allow business continuity planning to be devolved to non-practitioners if required and to allow any organisation to quickly and easily compile a robust BC Plan in line with the requirements of BS25999”.

The real trick of Impact Aware appears to be that department heads can compile Impact Aware BC models that not only represent their department, but that also contain all the necessary information required to produce a robust BC plan for that department.ImpactAware will then combine all the departmental models and automatically produce a business continuity plan for the entire organisation.

So how does it work ?

The Head of Brellion’s Software Services Division, Paul James, explains: “The user can clearly see how the dependencies in the organisation link together as the models take shape, and can amend the model at any time to correct any misalignment that becomes obvious.”“Changes to Impact Aware models can be made at any time and take minutes to complete. These changes can be anything from a minimal change such as a replacement PC or major changes such as staff restructuring.”“Managers can update their own departmental and organisational plans with changes as they happen very easily with minimal impact on their normal work load, ensuring that the organisation as a whole has an up to date and robust BC plan.”

So what are it’s limitations ?

Brellion claim that Impact Aware has no structural limitations. The size and complexity of any Impact Aware model is entirely up to the implementing organisation. Brellion also claim that even very large organisations are easily accommodated due to Impact Aware’s multi-level mapping and planning functionality.Brellion’s Managing Director, Niall Wright, told us: “The work we have done previously with the Impact Aware software engines in the finance and broadcast sectors has allowed us to smoothly integrate it into the business continuity sector. All we can reasonably ask is that organisations and individuals who feel that Impact Aware may be of benefit to them get in touch with us and test drive the product”