Appreciating the strong business need for a well-prepared and up-to-date business continuity plan, the Pharmacy Guild of Australia ("PGA") partnered with LMI Group in order to provide their members with a tailored version of the popular LMI ContinuityCoach product. The business continuity management tool was launched in March 2010 and, today, the one thousandth pharmacy has signed up. This means that 20% of all PGA pharmacies in Australia are now using
LMI ContinuityCoach, with many more to follow.

Users are saying that the system is easy to follow, quickly completed, and yet covers all their requirements. Already, one pharmacy has had to activate their plan and, they reported that it worked well and made the job of business recover so much faster.

"Business resilience is what we are trying to achieve and is what we are trying to provide users", said LMI Group’s Managing Director, Dr Allan Manning, upon achieving this milestone.

LMI ContinuityCoach is not just suitable for pharmacies, but is designed to allow any small- and medium-sized enterprise ("SME") to develop their own plan at a low cost using the template and assisted by comprehensive coaching. The plan is then stored on a secure site and can be downloaded for review or, more importantly, in the event of a business disruption, from any computer connected to the internet, anywhere in the world.

International research carried out in the UK and USA shows that businesses with a fully documented and exercised business continuity plan recovery considerably quicker than those that do not, with a much higher long-term survival rate. Typically, the issue in the past that has prevented SMEs from developing such a plan has been the cost. At $1,000 for up to five plans for the one subscriber, LMI ContinuityCoach is an affordable solution for any business.