Situation
The business context
A large restaurant company had no formal enterprise Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery program. There was no consistent business-led mechanism for identifying critical systems, defining acceptable recovery time and data-loss tolerances, documenting recovery procedures, or validating readiness across corporate, restaurant-facing, and guest-facing applications. A significant outage affecting the primary data center could disrupt operations across every brand, affect revenue, and damage the company’s reputation.
Task
The leadership mandate
As a senior IT leader, I was responsible for establishing an enterprise BCDR program from the ground up and translating business continuity needs into clear technology recovery requirements. The mandate was to identify the systems most critical to operations, establish accountable recovery objectives, implement repeatable plans and procedures, and demonstrate that the organization could restore in-scope applications within business-established tolerances.
Strategy
The strategic approach
My strategy was to establish BCDR as a continuous, business-led lifecycle rather than a technology backup exercise. Business impact analysis defined criticality and recovery requirements, technology owners translated them into executable recovery plans, and recurring exercises validated those plans and exposed gaps. We progressively expanded system coverage with each cycle, using the results to refine recovery capabilities and align them with business expectations, supported by a published calendar that institutionalized the program.
Action
How the work moved forward
- Established a business-led BCDR lifecycle: Published a recurring calendar covering business impact analysis, recovery planning, exercise preparation, remediation, and refinement. Partnered with leaders across every business unit and technology team to identify critical systems and translate operational tolerance into measurable RTO and RPO objectives.
- Translated requirements into executable plans: Worked with application and technology owners to develop dozens of Disaster Recovery Plans and Application Recovery Plans with documented responsibilities, dependencies, and recovery procedures.
- Delivered the first program iteration in eight months: Progressed from the first BIA meeting to an initial enterprise exercise covering approximately six core systems, creating a manageable starting point from which the program could mature.
- Tested a full primary-data-center isolation scenario: Severed network access to and from the primary data center, effectively taking it offline, and exercised planned failover to the recovery data center. Planning involved nearly 100 business and technology participants across corporate, restaurant-facing, and guest-facing systems for all brands.
- Used testing to mature the program: Captured technical and procedural gaps, remediated issues, refined recovery plans and targets, and progressively expanded critical-system coverage. Used a more frequent initial testing cadence to accelerate learning before transitioning to a sustainable recurring cycle.
Result
The measurable difference
- Established a formal enterprise BCDR capability where none had previously existed, expanding from approximately six core systems to dozens of recovery plans spanning corporate, restaurant-facing, and guest-facing applications across all brands.
- Progressed to achieving 100% of agreed RTO and RPO targets across all applications in scope during recovery exercises.
- Established a sustainable annual testing cadence and shared accountability across business and technology leaders for recovery priorities, plan quality, and ongoing readiness.
- Reduced exposure to prolonged outages, revenue disruption, and reputational damage through tested plans and demonstrated recovery capability.
Leadership insight
Operational resilience is built through disciplined learning. Business leaders must define what matters, technology teams must translate those priorities into executable plans, and recurring exercises must be used to challenge assumptions, correct gaps, and expand readiness over time.