The importance of business continuity planning is in understanding the risks involved with running a company, the preparedness of the company in relation to these risks, and what to do in case of an emergency. When an uneventful situation takes place, these plans will activate the necessary steps to ensure that businesses continue to run smoothly. In some countries, businesses are required by law to have a business continuity plan for emergencies.
How will your business respond to a situation that doesn’t play out in your favour? If you do not have an answer, you are placing yourself at risk. Having a Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is key to ensuring that you are prepared for the unexpected.
Business continuity planning (BCP) includes the businesses’ plans for staying in business after a disaster, such as a power outage or fire, and incorporates the effect of natural and man-made disasters. A company’s BCP may also include strategies to keep data safe from loss or theft, as well as saving time and money by minimising any downtime.
What is Business Continuity Plan?
Business Continuity Plan (also known as BCP) is a set of predefined protocols and strategies that outlines how your business will respond in the case of a disaster or emergency, natural or man-made. The BCP will include steps to take when uneventful happens so that every important part of the business is taken care of.
A BCP should be comprehensive, holistic, and encompass every aspect of the business. It would cover all departments from IT to human resources and all your key assets, and how to minimise downtime. It should also contain a list of protocols that define how you and your team respond in the event of any of the following situations:
- Natural disasters
- Equipment failures
- Financial or cash flow issues
- Man-made disasters
The goal of BCP is to ensure continuous operation and disaster recovery following an emergency. This occurs by ensuring the availability of resources that are needed for these functions, thus enabling quick action if something goes wrong. These are extremely important to any business as failure to plan can be very costly. According to IBM, infrastructure failures cost businesses an average of $100,000 an hour. A well-thought BCP plan mitigates these costs by minimising the effects of these failures.
5 Steps for Building a Business Continuity Plan
#1 Perform In-Depth Risk Assessments
Create a list of every possible risk that your business may face. The list should include risks related to the following areas:
- Industry
- Geographical
- Trends and Market Movements
- Stakeholders
- Employees
- Business Infrastructure
With this list, work through it by prioritising the risks based on their likelihood of impacting your business. An example would be if your operations are based in an area that is prone to natural disasters such as earthquakes or floods. Thus, a higher priority will be placed on this risk. Your prioritised list will be an indication of which areas to focus on when creating your BCP.
#2 Identify Each Critical Function and Create Corresponding Recovery Plans
Focus on the impact that those risks pose to the business. Start by creating a list of the critical functions your business needs to be fully operational. Thoroughly examine each potential risk and how it could impact each function.
When you identify a critical function that would be affected by the risk, build a disaster recovery solution for that function. The plan will include creating backups and storage of crucial data, enabling employees to work from home, engaging with an external supplier or vendor, or maintaining a secondary location and backup hardware.
Repeat this procedure for every critical function, identifying the level of risk it faces and what you need to have in place to ensure the quick revival of the function in the event of an uneventful incident.
#3 Define Emergency Roles
Your BCP plan will only work when you loop in your employees. They are as important in your response to an emergency as your disaster recovering plans. Your employee’s rapid action is what determines the success of your business recovery plan.
Assign roles to key employees for each potential situation you’ve identified. Define the person who will act as an emergency coordinator, their roles, and responsibilities for the position. You may need to ensure that they are prepared for these situations, by providing the right training and mentoring. Your plan should also include protocols for staff reallocation if your business is spread across different locations.
In conclusion, your employees need to know the exact steps they need to perform when an emergency occurs in the company.
#4 Formalise and Document Your Plan
You may have the entire BCP plan in your head, however, that will not work out unless it is formalised and documented. Make sure that the entire plan is put in writing and kept in a location that the employees can access and activate when needed. A copy of the BCP should also be stored in an off-site location to reduce the risk of the plan being damaged in event of a disaster.
#5 Test Your BCP Regularly
As with any business, change is constant. It is thus important to revisit your BCP often by reviewing the current risk and capacity of the business. It is also worth creating an emergency preparedness team that revisits the BCP regularly to ensure that it is relevant to the current business operations and business processes.
Whenever there is a significant change, you should test your BCP to identify gaps.
Protect Your Business Continuity with a BCP
Leadership within a business is not just about the ability to build and motivate teams. You must also learn to safeguard your company to make sure your team will have the ability to do what they need to do in any situation. A well-thought-out BCP outlines every protocol to follow in the event of an emergency. Build a BCP plan so that you can lead your business through any crisis.
There are a lot of elements to consider when building a Business Continuity Plan. Having the right expertise alongside your planning helps to ensure its completeness and comprehensiveness. If you’d like help with building your BCP, give us a call to schedule a 15-minute consultation.