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What are the 5 key components of a business continuity plan?

5 components of business continuity plan

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Putting together a robust business continuity plan means that your business is more likely to be able to react confidently and quickly in the event of disruption. this can help you to keep customer dissatisfaction at bay, give your team confidence and reduce recovery timescales. in order to achieve this, every business continuity plan needs to incorporate five key elements., 1. risks and potential business impact.

Any business continuity plan worth its salt will be based on a business impact analysis, which identifies potential risks and vulnerabilities both within and outside the business. These risks could be anything from flooding or a major IT disruption to a failure from an important supplier. By knowing what you could potentially face, you can begin to take steps to prevent or mitigate the risk.

A strong plan will also use the output of your business impact analysis to reveal the possible consequences of disruption on your business. This will enable you to anticipate its cost, the effect it could have on essential business functions and the time needed to recover.

2. Planning an effective response

Once you have an awareness of the types of risks and threats your business may be vulnerable to, you can begin to form an effective plan.

A comprehensive business continuity plan will take each risk identified in the business impact analysis and develop an appropriate response strategy to either minimise it or prevent it altogether. These detailed plans will describe the action needed and outline who needs to be involved to implement it. Timescales and resources, such as laptops, alternative warehouse space and mobile phones, should also be laid out to ensure a quick and relevant response.

3. Roles and responsibilities

In order for a crisis or disruption to be met confidently, the key people in your business need to know their roles and responsibilities. A business continuity plan will therefore document which key personnel need to be involved in the response to the disruption. This will typically be more senior staff members, but this depends on your business and the type of risk you are dealing with.

Once these people have been identified, their roles and actions need to be clearly defined so that they can react quickly and efficiently. The resources they need following a disruption should also be clearly stated so that they can be prioritised ahead of the rest of the team. For instance, if a remote office needs to be set up following a disruption, critical personnel will need to be prioritised when it comes to allocating resources such as laptops, tablets and mobile phones.

4. Communication

Clear communication is vital during business disruptions. Effective communication across your business can reassure team members and give them confidence that the organisation is taking effective steps to respond and recover. Outside of your company, good communication is also necessary in order to liaise with suppliers and customers and minimise dissatisfaction.

To prepare for this, a business continuity plan will normally include a list of key contacts as well as templated press releases and social media posts. Having these in place in advance can speed up communication in a crisis and ensure that both your staff and external contacts are kept up to speed. In larger organisations, it may be necessary to have a separate communication plan that provides a comprehensive approach to communication during a crisis.

5. Testing and training

Business continuity plans are not just theoretical – they need to be robust enough to be put into action. In order to check this, the final key component of a business continuity plan is testing and exercising.

Realistic scenarios can be used to test the plan and your team’s response. By doing so, you can identify room for improvement and take action to improve the plan before a disruption occurs. Testing and exercising business continuity plans also helps to ensure that key personnel understand the plan and their role in it. This means that the company can respond quickly and efficiently when a disruption occurs.

Raising awareness of the business continuity plan among your wider staff will also help them to understand their role in responding to disruptions. Many companies run regular awareness training sessions and include business continuity as a key topic during new staff inductions. This training can then improve the resilience of the company overall.

Building your own business continuity plan

An internationally recognised mark of best practice, ISO 22301 will enable you to implement, maintain and improve a business continuity management system, which will support your business before, during and after disruption.

To find out more, visit our dedicated webpage for  ISO 22301 .

You can also get in touch on  0333 259 0445  or by emailing  [email protected] .

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Claire Price

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Claire worked for Citation ISO Certification between 2020 and 2022 writing creative and informative content on ISO certification and consultation to help businesses reach their potential.

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What does a business continuity plan include? 5 key elements

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The COVID-19 crisis has forced businesses to tackle a multitude of challenges over the past few months, but one of the most important involves the business continuity (BC) plan. Many companies learned too late that their plans were inadequate, lacking interoperability with other critical plans for crisis management, disaster recovery, and pandemic readiness.

Many business contnuity plans are either too high-level to offer any real actionable detail or consist of content that is out of date. In other instances, plans place too much emphasis on short-term disturbances and forsake long-lasting disruptions. Many also gloss over pre-event preparations and work acceleration strategies.

The pandemic has reset expectations. While CIOs have a vested interest in the effectiveness of BC plans – after all, they ensure essential activities can withstand a variety of disruptions to keep the business running as IT reinstates services after an incident – resilience should be a company-wide priority.

[ Also read: Digital transformation: Why data leaders must play offense during COVID-19 . ]

1. Build your business continuity plan foundation

As you reimagine your entire business resilience program, here’s what your BC plans should include. Effective BC plans start with the following five essential framework elements:

  • Objectives: What will the plan cover, and how does it fit into a larger organizational response to disruption?
  • Activation procedure: What sets the BC plan in motion? Who is involved, and what resources — i.e., backups, workplace recovery facilities, etc. — are available?
  • Priorities: How will you communicate with staff, vendors, customers, and others? What are the most business-critical applications and systems that you need to focus on reviving?
  • Assumptions and limitations: You can’t foresee every disruption, but you can detail limitations in your plan to allow for effective decision-making. Identify limitations in the extent, duration, and impact of your plan.
  • Standing down procedures: Determine your criteria for saying an incident is closed and how to extract lessons learned from the experience. This section can also include an appendix of relevant resources, from templates like action logs to meeting agendas.

Within this framework, there’s a lot of room to customize for your size, maturity, compliance requirements, and other factors. While every organization’s BC plan approach will be unique, it’s important to consider the following aspects when designing your plan.

2. Develop response strategies if key resources are unavailable

Effective BC plans must include well-defined strategies and actions for responding in the event that key resources become unavailable. These could include:

  • Third-party services
  • IT services

You need to have planned business responses for each of these disruption scenarios, and they must be at the individual resource level. Generic statements that convey the “what’s” without the “how’s” aren’t helpful. For example, if your inventory management system is unavailable, how will you continue your receiving activity? Be specific in your plans.

IT must be aware of the part it plays in enabling disruption response strategies. For example, remote working is one possible business response for workplace unavailability. In that event, IT might be tasked with upgrading your company’s virtual meeting service and expanding the IT help desk staff.

[ Read also: LogMeIn CIO: This is IT's time to shine on business continuity  and  Moving from COVID-19 crisis leadership to strategic leadership . ]

However, in a workforce unavailability scenario, your solution might be to transition work to personnel in another geography. In this case, IT’s response might be to adjust network configuration in anticipation of increased volumes from a network node.

BC planning is also essential within IT, which relies on people, workplaces, equipment, third-party services, supporting systems, and data. Put comprehensive BC plans in place for key IT activities where ongoing service levels are of paramount importance. This includes:

  • Network operations centers
  • Information security operations centers
  • IT help desks
  • Disaster recovery teams

3. Work out timing for each response strategy

Timing is critical.

Determine the anticipated time to implement each of your defined response strategies, as well as how long each strategy can remain effective.

For some strategy options, the goal should be quick implementation times. For others, focus on ensuring the response strategies will be effective for sustained timeframes – ideally three to six months or longer.

Let's look at two more important elements:

5 components of business continuity plan

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  • Business Continuity Plan Basics
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  • BCP vs. Disaster Recovery Plan

Frequently Asked Questions

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The Bottom Line

What is a business continuity plan (bcp), and how does it work.

5 components of business continuity plan

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What Is a Business Continuity Plan (BCP)? 

A business continuity plan (BCP) is a system of prevention and recovery from potential threats to a company. The plan ensures that personnel and assets are protected and are able to function quickly in the event of a disaster.

Key Takeaways

  • Business continuity plans (BCPs) are prevention and recovery systems for potential threats, such as natural disasters or cyber-attacks.
  • BCP is designed to protect personnel and assets and make sure they can function quickly when disaster strikes.
  • BCPs should be tested to ensure there are no weaknesses, which can be identified and corrected.

Understanding Business Continuity Plans (BCPs)

BCP involves defining any and all risks that can affect the company's operations, making it an important part of the organization's risk management strategy. Risks may include natural disasters—fire, flood, or weather-related events—and cyber-attacks . Once the risks are identified, the plan should also include:

  • Determining how those risks will affect operations
  • Implementing safeguards and procedures to mitigate the risks
  • Testing procedures to ensure they work
  • Reviewing the process to make sure that it is up to date

BCPs are an important part of any business. Threats and disruptions mean a loss of revenue and higher costs, which leads to a drop in profitability. And businesses can't rely on insurance alone because it doesn't cover all the costs and the customers who move to the competition. It is generally conceived in advance and involves input from key stakeholders and personnel.

Business impact analysis, recovery, organization, and training are all steps corporations need to follow when creating a Business Continuity Plan.

Benefits of a Business Continuity Plan

Businesses are prone to a host of disasters that vary in degree from minor to catastrophic. Business continuity planning is typically meant to help a company continue operating in the event of major disasters such as fires. BCPs are different from a disaster recovery plan, which focuses on the recovery of a company's information technology system after a crisis.

Consider a finance company based in a major city. It may put a BCP in place by taking steps including backing up its computer and client files offsite. If something were to happen to the company's corporate office, its satellite offices would still have access to important information.

An important point to note is that BCP may not be as effective if a large portion of the population is affected, as in the case of a disease outbreak. Nonetheless, BCPs can improve risk management—preventing disruptions from spreading. They can also help mitigate downtime of networks or technology, saving the company money.

How To Create a Business Continuity Plan

There are several steps many companies must follow to develop a solid BCP. They include:

  • Business Impact Analysis : Here, the business will identify functions and related resources that are time-sensitive. (More on this below.)
  • Recovery : In this portion, the business must identify and implement steps to recover critical business functions.
  • Organization : A continuity team must be created. This team will devise a plan to manage the disruption.
  • Training : The continuity team must be trained and tested. Members of the team should also complete exercises that go over the plan and strategies.

Companies may also find it useful to come up with a checklist that includes key details such as emergency contact information, a list of resources the continuity team may need, where backup data and other required information are housed or stored, and other important personnel.

Along with testing the continuity team, the company should also test the BCP itself. It should be tested several times to ensure it can be applied to many different risk scenarios . This will help identify any weaknesses in the plan which can then be corrected.

In order for a business continuity plan to be successful, all employees—even those who aren't on the continuity team—must be aware of the plan.

Business Continuity Impact Analysis

An important part of developing a BCP is a business continuity impact analysis. It identifies the effects of disruption of business functions and processes. It also uses the information to make decisions about recovery priorities and strategies.

FEMA provides an operational and financial impact worksheet to help run a business continuity analysis. The worksheet should be completed by business function and process managers who are well acquainted with the business. These worksheets will summarize the following:

  • The impacts—both financial and operational—that stem from the loss of individual business functions and process
  • Identifying when the loss of a function or process would result in the identified business impacts

Completing the analysis can help companies identify and prioritize the processes that have the most impact on the business's financial and operational functions. The point at which they must be recovered is generally known as the “recovery time objective.”

Business Continuity Plan vs. Disaster Recovery Plan

BCPs and disaster recovery plans are similar in nature, the latter focuses on technology and information technology (IT) infrastructure. BCPs are more encompassing—focusing on the entire organization, such as customer service and supply chain. 

BCPs focus on reducing overall costs or losses, while disaster recovery plans look only at technology downtimes and related costs. Disaster recovery plans tend to involve only IT personnel—which create and manage the policy. However, BCPs tend to have more personnel trained on the potential processes. 

Why Is Business Continuity Plan (BCP) Important?

Businesses are prone to a host of disasters that vary in degree from minor to catastrophic and business continuity plans (BCPs) are an important part of any business. BCP is typically meant to help a company continue operating in the event of threats and disruptions. This could result in a loss of revenue and higher costs, which leads to a drop in profitability. And businesses can't rely on insurance alone because it doesn't cover all the costs and the customers who move to the competition.

What Should a Business Continuity Plan (BCP) Include?

Business continuity plans involve identifying any and all risks that can affect the company's operations. The plan should also determine how those risks will affect operations and implement safeguards and procedures to mitigate the risks. There should also be testing procedures to ensure these safeguards and procedures work. Finally, there should be a review process to make sure that the plan is up to date.

What Is Business Continuity Impact Analysis?

An important part of developing a BCP is a business continuity impact analysis which identifies the effects of disruption of business functions and processes. It also uses the information to make decisions about recovery priorities and strategies.

FEMA provides an operational and financial impact worksheet to help run a business continuity analysis.

These worksheets summarize the impacts—both financial and operational—that stem from the loss of individual business functions and processes. They also identify when the loss of a function or process would result in the identified business impacts.

Business continuity plans (BCPs) are created to help speed up the recovery of an organization filling a threat or disaster. The plan puts in place mechanisms and functions to allow personnel and assets to minimize company downtime. BCPs cover all organizational risks should a disaster happen, such as flood or fire.  

Federal Emergency Management Agency. " Business Process Analysis and Business Impact Analysis User Guide ." Pages 15 - 17.

Ready. “ IT Disaster Recovery Plan .”

Federal Emergency Management Agency. " Business Process Analysis and Business Impact Analysis User Guide ." Pages 15-17.

5 components of business continuity plan

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The Key Components of a Business Continuity Plan

You have a great disaster recovery (DR) plan , and Zerto has helped simplify that even more by allowing your IT organization to consolidate multiple point products with a single, simple, and scalable solution. You have freed up valuable time for your IT operations teams to deliver more innovation as your business transforms. You have adopted the cloud for multiple applications – maybe you’ve moved away from the data center management business and are fully capable of DR to the public cloud – but has your business continuity plan (BCP) evolved alongside your DR plan to ensure holistic success in the event of an unplanned disruption? Even if you can have all those workloads recovered in the cloud or on-premises within minutes, the business operations side needs to be ready to shift in order to mitigate the downtime.

Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Planning

According to ISO 22301, a business continuity plan is defined as “documented procedures that guide organizations to R espond, R ecover, R esume, and R estore to a pre-defined level of operations following disruption.” Disaster recovery is a subset of the overall BCP because, without your data, you are at the mercy of whatever disruption found its way into your datacenter. At Zerto, we create software that, at its core, delivers industry-leading recovery point objectives (RPOs) and recovery time objectives (RTOs) , minimizing data loss and disruption time. We also go the extra mile and provide your business with orchestration, automation, and visibility – to help you meet the “ four R’s ” above and bridge the gap between disaster recovery and business continuity .

Having a business continuity plan in place is important because once IT has recovered the downed systems, the team responsible for executing the BCP must initiate their plan to bring operations back up as quickly as possible. Every minute counts. For every minute the business is down, there is revenue loss, brand impact, dissatisfied customers, lost productivity, and much more. So, what exactly is involved in a business continuity plan?

6 Key Components of a Business Continuity Plan

In the previous section, I mentioned that communication during a disruption is one vital aspect of a sound business continuity plan. Before a disaster was declared, there would have been key criteria and triggers before initiating the plan, so we’re off to a good start! Let’s take a closer look at several other critical components of a business continuity plan necessary for successful recovery in the event of an unplanned disruption.

Contact Information and Service Level Agreements (SLAs)

The first component of a business continuity plan is contact information along with SLAs. You will need to identify the following:

  • Stakeholders
  • Key personnel
  • Backup site operators
  • Providers (equipment, services)
  • Emergency responders
  • Third-party vendors
  • Facilities managers
  • Incident response team(s)
  • Successors in case key personnel are unavailable or become overwhelmed
  • Additional critical third-party personnel

Business Impact Analysis (BIA)

A business impact analysis (BIA) will help you identify and predict business disruption consequences and enable you to gather information to develop recovery strategies. Here are some examples of what may be covered in a business impact analysis:

  • An understanding of the changes introduced during unplanned disruption
  • Legal or regulatory repercussions of unplanned disruption
  • Inventory of all business units required for continuity of operations
  • Key personnel as well as staff required to support that personnel
  • Pre/post-disruption dependencies
  • Validation of test plan
  • Ranking of priorities & order of operations
  • Revenue loss
  • Customer service
  • Brand/reputation damage
  • Identify acceptable RTO
  • Identify an acceptable amount of data loss RPO to minimize the overall impact on the business
  • Recovery strategy

Risk Assessment

Risk assessment is the process of identifying, understanding and evaluating the potential risks to all aspects of an organization’s operations. Here are some examples:

Hazard Identification – Probability and Magnitude

  • Natural Disasters
  • Utility Outage
  • Cyber Attack

Assets at Risk – Vulnerability Assessment

  • Property (buildings, critical I=infrastructure)
  • Supply chain
  • Systems/equipment
  • Business operations
  • Regulatory and contractual obligations
  • Environment

Impact Analysis

  • Property damage
  • Business interruption
  • Loss of customers
  • Financial loss
  • Environmental contamination
  • Fines and penalties

Identify Critical Functions

Identification of critical functions will reveal what processes are critical to maintaining and running a business in the event of an unplanned disruption. You want to identify your business critical priorities and focus recovery efforts there first. These include but are not limited to:

  • Payroll and time tracking
  • Revenue operations
  • Physical security
  • Information security
  • Core business functions
  • Data protection after recovery
  • Identity & access management

Communications

When an unplanned disruption occurs, communication with employees, shareholders, users, customers, and key personnel is critical. Human resource professionals can play a crucial role in ensuring consistent and timely communication between the organizational recovery efforts and staff. When customers are involved, social media has become a vital tool to provide timely updates, as many users turn to social media when incidents arise.

  • What is your crisis communication strategy?
  • Communication during an event is key to orchestrate personnel, providers, and third-party vendors if required.

Having a plan is one thing, but testing and practicing it is imperative. Having an inadequate plan is about as good as not having a plan at all. It is vital to develop a strategy to routinely test , and test often, to identify gaps in your plan and anticipate any changes along the way.

Having a working test plan will help you:

  • Identify gaps or weaknesses in your BCP
  • Evaluate the organization’s response to different types of disruptive events
  • Improve systems and processes based on your test results
  • Confirm that your continuity objectives can be successfully executed against and met
  • Update your plan along the way
  • Document lessons learned

In conclusion

We understand that unplanned disruptions do not just affect IT operations. They have a domino effect on your entire business! As digital transformation is in full gear, your reliance on technology to remain visible to the world steadily increases. Currently, we find ourselves in the midst of a global pandemic; the Atlantic hurricane season is just kicking off, wildfire season is on the horizon, and cyber-attacks are steadily increasing. Is your business prepared? We need to be more proactive than ever when it comes to DR and BCP; in fact, the two strategies should overlap, and both teams on the field should be playing together toward a common goal – resilience .

Learn more key considerations and where modern IT enterprises are heading in the IDC report, “The State of Data Protection and Disaster Recovery Readiness: 2022” .

5 components of business continuity plan

Gene Torres is a Technology Evangelist at Zerto with 21 years of experience as an IT Professional focusing on data center virtualization and resilience. Prior to Zerto, Gene was a Solutions Engineer before advancing to Enterprise Architect. He lives in Tacoma, WA with his wife, Rhea, and 3 daughters. He maintains his own technology-focused blog as an active vExpert and enjoys gaming, barbecue, and spending time outdoors.

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How to Write a Business Continuity Plan Step-by-Step: Our Experts Provide Tips

By Andy Marker | October 21, 2020 (updated August 17, 2021)

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In order to adequately prepare for a crisis, your company needs a business continuity plan. We’ve culled detailed step-by-step instructions, as well as expert tips for writing a business continuity plan and free downloadable tools.  

Included on this page, find the steps to writing a business continuity plan and a discussion of the key components in a plan . You’ll also find a business continuity plan quick-start template  and a disruptive incident quick-reference card template for print or mobile, and an expert disaster preparation checklist .

Step by Step: How to Write a Business Continuity Plan

A business continuity plan refers to the steps a company takes to help it continue operations during a crisis. In order to write a business continuity plan, you gather information about key people, tools, and processes, then write the plan as procedures and lists of resources. 

To make formatting easy, download a free business continuity plan template . To learn more about the role of a business continuity plan, read our comprehensive guide to business continuity planning . 

  • Write a Mission Statement for the Plan: Describe the objectives of the plan. When does it need to be completed? What is the budget for disaster and recovery preparation, including research, training, consultants, and tools? Be sure to detail any assumptions about financial or other resources, such as government business continuity grants.
  • Set Up Governance: Describe the business continuity team. Include names or titles and role designations, as well as contact information. Clearly define roles, lines of authority and succession, and accountability. Add an organization or a functional diagram. Select one of these free organizational chart templates to get started.
  • Write the Plan Procedures and Appendices: This is the core of your plan. There's no one correct way to create a business continuity document, but the critical content it should include are procedures, agreements, and resources.Think of your plan as lists of tasks or processes that people must perform to keep your operation running. Be specific in your directions, and use diagrams and illustrations. Remember that checklists and work instructions are simple and powerful tools to convey key information in a crisis. Learn more about procedures and work instructions . You should also note who on the team is responsible for knowing plan details.

Michele Barry

  • Set Procedures for Testing Recovery and Response: Create test guidelines and schedules for testing. To review the plan, consider reaching out to people who did not write the plan. Put together the forms and checklists that attendees will use during tests.

Alex Fullick

A business continuity plan is governed by a business continuity policy. You can learn more about creating a business continuity policy and find examples by reading our guide on developing an effective business continuity policy .

How to Create a Business Continuity Plan

Creating a business continuity plan (BCP) involves gathering a team, studying risks and key tasks, and choosing recovery activities. Then write the plan as a set of lists and guidelines, which may address risks such as fires, floods, pandemics, or data breaches.

According to Alex Fullick, your best bet is to create a simple plan. “I usually break everything down into three key categories: people, places, and things. If you focus on a couple of key pieces, you will be a lot more effective. That big binder of procedures is absolutely worthless. You need a bunch of guidelines to say what you do in a given situation: where are our triggers for deciding we’re in a crisis and we have to stop doing XYZ, and just focus on ABC.” 

“Post-pandemic, I think new managers will develop more policies and guidelines of all types than required, as a fear response,” cautions Michele Barry. 

Because every company is different, no two approaches to business continuity planning are the same. Tony Bombacino, Co-Founder and President of Real Food Blends , describes his company’s formal and informal business continuity approaches. “The first step in any crisis is for our nerve center to connect quickly, assess the situation, and then go into action,” he explains. 

Tony Bombacino

“Our sales manager and our marketing manager might discuss what’s going on, and say, ‘Are we going to say anything on social media? Do we need to reach out to any of our customers? The key things, like maintaining stock levels or what if somebody gets sick? What if there's a recall?’ Those plans we have laid out. But we're not a 5,000-person multi-billion-dollar company, so our business continuity plan is often in emails and Google Docs.” 

Mike Semel

“I've done planning literally for hundreds of businesses where we've just filled out basic forms,” says Mike Semel, President and Chief Compliance Officer of Semel Consulting . “For example, noting the insurance company's phone number — you know, on the back of your utility bill, which you never look at, there's an emergency number for if the power goes out or if the gas shuts off. We've helped people gather all that information and put it down. Even if there's no other plan, just having that information at their fingertips when they need it may be enough.”

You can also approach your business continuity planning as including three types of responses:

  • Proactive Strategies: Proactive approaches prevent crises. For example, you may buy an emergency generator to keep power running in your factory, or install a security system to prevent or limit loss during break-ins. Or you may create a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policy and offer training for remote workers to protect your network and data security.
  • Reactive Strategies: Reactive strategies are your immediate responses to a crisis. Examples of reactive methods include evacuation procedures, fire procedures, and emergency response strategies.
  • Recovery Strategies: Recovery strategies describe how you resume operations to produce a minimum acceptable level of service. The recovery plan includes actions to stand up temporary processes. The plan also describes the longer-term efforts, such as relocation, data restoration, temporary workaround processes, or outsourcing tasks. Recovery strategies are not limited to IT and data recovery.

Quick-Start Guide Business Continuity Plan Template

Business Continuity Quick Start Guide and template

If you don’t already have a business continuity plan in place, but need to create one in short order to respond to a disruption, use this quick-start business continuity template. This template is available in Word and Google Docs formats, and it’s simply formatted so that you can focus on brainstorming and problem-solving. 

Download Quick-Start Guide Business Continuity Plan Template

Word | PDF | Google Docs | Smartsheet

For other most useful free, downloadable business continuity plan (BCP) templates please read our "Free Business Continuity Plan Templates" article.

Key Components of a Business Continuity Plan

Your company’s complete business continuity plan will have many details. Your plan may differ from other companies' plans based on industry and other factors. Each facility or business unit may also conduct an impact analysis and create disaster recovery and continuity plans . Consider adding these key components to your business plan:

  • Contact Information: These pages include contact information for key employees, vendors, and critical third parties. Locate this information at the beginning of the plan. 
  • Business Impact Analysis: When you conduct business impact analysis (BIA), you evaluate the financial and other changes in a disruptive event (you can use one of these business impact templates to get started). Evaluate impact in terms of brand damage, product failure or malfunction, lost revenue, or legal and regulatory repercussions.
  • Risk Assessment: In this section, assess the potential risks to all aspects of the organization’s operations. Look at potential risks related to such matters as cash on hand, stock levels, and staff qualifications. Although you may face an infinite number of potential internal and external risks, focus on people, places, and things to keep from becoming overwhelmed. Then analyze the effects of any items that are completely lost or need repairs. Also, understand that risk assessment is an ongoing effort that works in tandem with training and testing. Consider adding a completed risk matrix to your plan. You can create one using a downloadable risk matrix template . 
  • Critical Functions Analysis and List: As a faster alternative to a BIA, a critical functions analysis reveals what processes are critical to keeping your company running. Examples of critical functions include payroll and wages, accounts receivable, customer service, or production. According to Michele Barry, with a values-based approach to critical functions, you should consider who you really are as a company. Then decide what you must continue doing and what you can stop doing. 
  • Trigger and Disaster Declaration Criteria: Here, you should detail how your executive management will know when to declare an emergency and initiate the plan.
  • Succession Plan: Identify alternate staff for key roles in each unit. Schedule time throughout the year to observe alternates as they make important decisions and complete recovery tasks.
  • Alternate Suppliers: If your goods are regulated (i.e., food, toy, and pharmaceutical manufacturing), your raw resources and parts must always be up to standard. Source suppliers before a crisis to ensure that regulatory vetting and approval do not delay supplies. 
  • Operations Plan: Describe how your organization will resume and continue daily operations after a disruption. Include a checklist with such items as supplies, equipment, and information on where data is backed up and where you keep the plan. Note who should have copies of the plan. 
  • Crisis Communication Strategy: Detail how the organization will communicate with employees, customers, and third-party entities in the event of a disruption. If regular communications systems are disabled, make a plan for alternate methods. Download a free crisis communication strategy template to get started on this aspect. 
  • Incident Response Plan: Describe how your organization plans to respond to a range of likely incidents or disruptions, and define the triggers for activating the plan. 
  • Alternate Site Relocation: The alternate site is the location that the organization moves to after a disruption occurs. In the plan, you can also note the transportation and resources required to move the business and the processes you must maintain in this facility.
  • Interim Procedures: These are the critical processes that must continue, either in their original or alternate forms.
  • Restoration of Critical Data: Critical data includes anything you must immediately recover to maintain normal business functions.
  • Vendor Partner Agreements: List your organization’s key vendors and how they can help you maintain or resume operations.
  • Work Backlog: This includes the work that piles up when systems are shut down. You must complete this work first when processes start again.
  • Recovery Strategy for IT Services: This section details the steps you take to restore the IT processes that are necessary to maintain the business.
  • Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO): RTO refers to the maximum amount of time that a company can stop its processes and the length of time without access to data before productivity substantially drops. Determine RTOs for each unit, factoring in people, places, and things. 
  • Backup Plans: What if plans, processes, or resources fail or are unavailable? Determine alternatives now, so you don't have to scramble. Decide on a backup roster for personnel who are unavailable.
  • Manual Workarounds: This section details how a business can operate by hand, should all failsafe measures break down.
  • External Audit Details: For regulated organizations, external audits may be compulsory. Your scheduled internal audits will prepare you for external audits.
  • Test and Exercise Plan: Identify how and when you will test the continuity plan, including details about periodic tabletop testing and more complex real-world scenario testing.
  • Change Management: Note how you will incorporate learnings from tests and exercises, disseminate changes, and review the plan and track changes.

Key Resources for Business Continuity

To fix problems, restore operations, or submit an insurance claim, you need readily available details of the human resources and other groups that can assist with business continuity. (Your organization's unique situation may also require specific types of resources.) Add this information to appendices at the back of your continuity plan.

Fullick suggests broadening the definition of human assets. "People are our employees, certainly. But we forget that the term ‘people’ includes executive management. Management doesn't escape pandemics or the flu or a car crash. Bad things can happen to them and around them, too." 

Use the following list as a prompt for recording important information about your organization. Your unique situation may require other types of information.

  • Lists of key employees and their contact information. Also, think beyond C-level and response team members to staff with long-term or specialized knowledge
  • Disaster recovery and continuity team contact names, roles, and contact information
  • Emergency contact number for police and emergency services for your location
  • Non-emergency contact information for police and medical
  • Emergency and non-emergency contact numbers for facilities issues
  • Board member contact information
  • Personnel roster, including family or emergency contact names and numbers for the entire organization
  • Contractors for any repairs
  • Client contact information and SLAs
  • Insurance contacts for all plans
  • Key regulatory contacts.
  • Legal contacts
  • Vendor contact information and partner agreements and SLAs
  • Addresses and details for each office or facility
  • Primary and secondary contact and information for each facility or office, including at least one phone number and email address
  • Off-site recovery location
  • Addresses and access information for storage facilities or vehicle compounds
  • Funding and banking information
  • IT details and data recovery information, including an inventory of apps and license numbers  
  • Insurance policy numbers and agent contact information for each plan, healthcare, property, vehicle, etc.
  • Inventory of tangibles, including equipment, hardware, supplies, fixtures, and fittings (if you are a supplier or manufacturer, include an inventory of raw materials and finished goods)
  • Lease details
  • Licenses, permits, other legal documents
  • List of special items that you use regularly, but don't order frequently
  • Location of backup equipment
  • Utility account numbers and contact information (for electric, gas, telephone, water, waste pickup, etc.)

Activities to Complete Before Writing the Business Continuity Plan

Before you write your plan, take these preliminary steps to assemble a team and gather background information. 

  • Incident Commander: This person is responsible for all aspects of an emergency response.
  • Emergency Response Team: The emergency response team refers to the group of people in charge of responding to an emergency or disruption.
  • Information Technology Recovery Team: This group is responsible for recovering important IT services.
  • Alternate Site/Location Operation Team: This team is responsible for maintaining business operations at an alternate site.
  • Facilities Management Team: The facilities management team is responsible for managing all of the main business facilities and determining the necessary responses to maintain them in light of a disaster or disruption.
  • Department Upper Management: This includes key stakeholders and upper management employees who govern BCP decisions.
  • Conduct business impact analysis or critical function analysis. Understand how the loss of processes in each department can affect internal and external operations. See our article on business continuity planning to learn more about BIAs.
  • Conduct risk analysis. Determine the potential risks and threats to your organization.
  • Identify the scope of the plan. Define where the business continuity plan applies, whether to one office, the entire organization, or only certain aspects of the organization. Use the BIA and risk analysis to identify critical functions and key resources that you must maintain. Set goals to determine the level of detail required. Set milestones to track progress in completing the plan. "Setting scope is essential," Barry insists. "You need to define the core and noncore aspects of the business and the minimum requirements for achieving continuity."
  • Strategize recovery approaches: Strategize how your business should respond to a disruption, based on your risk assessment and BIA. During this process, you determine the core details of the BCP, add the key components and resources, and determine the timing for what must happen before, during, and after a disruptive event.

Common Structure of a Business Continuity Plan

Knowing the common structure should help shape the plan — and frees you from thinking about form when you should be thinking about content. Here is an example of a BCP format:

  • Business Name: Record the business name, which usually appears on the title page.
  • Date: The day the BCP is completed and signed off. 
  • Purpose and Scope: This section describes the reason for and span of the plan.
  • Business Impact Analysis: Add the results of the BIA to your plan.  
  • Risk Assessment: Consider adding the risk assessment matrix to your plan.
  • Policy Information: Include the business continuity policy or policy highlights.
  • Emergency Management and Response: You can detail emergency response measures separately from other recovery and continuity procedures.
  • The Plan: The core of the plan details step-by-step procedures for business recovery and continuity.
  • Relevant Appendices: Appendices can include such information as contact lists, org charts, copies of insurance policies, or any supporting documents relevant in a crisis.

Keep in mind that every business is different — no two BCPs look the same. Tailor your business continuity plan to your company, and make sure the document captures all the information you need to keep your business functioning. Having everything you need to know in an emergency is the most crucial part of a BCP.

Disruptive Incident Quick-Reference Card Template

Disruptive Incident Quick Reference Cad Template

Use this quick-reference card template to write the key steps that employees should take in case of an emergency. Customize this template for each business unit, department, or role. Describe what people should do immediately and in the following days and weeks to continue the business. Print PDFs and laminate them for workstations or wallets, or load the PDFs on your mobile phone. 

Download Disruptive Incident Quick-Reference Card Template 

Expert Disaster Preparation Checklist

Business continuity and disaster planning aren’t just about your buildings and cloud backup — it’s about people and their families. Based on a document by Mike Semel of Semel Consulting, this disaster checklist helps you prepare for the human needs of your staff and their families, including food, shelter, and other comforts.

Tips for Writing a Business Continuity Plan

With its many moving parts and considerations, a business continuity plan can seem intimidating. Follow these tips to help you write, track, and maintain a strong BCP:

  • Take the continuity management planning  process seriously.
  • Interview key people in the organization who have successfully managed disruptive incidents.
  • Get approval from leadership early on and seek their ongoing championship of continuity preparedness.
  • Be flexible when it comes to who you involve, what resources you need, and how you achieve the most effective plan.
  • Keep the plan as simple and targeted as possible to make it easy to understand.
  • Limit the plan to practical disaster response actions.
  • Base the plan on the most up-to-date, accurate information available.
  • Plan for the worst-case scenario and broadly cover many types of potential disruptive situations. 
  • Consider the minimum amount of information or resources you need to keep your business running in a disaster. 
  • Use the data you gather in your BIA and risk analysis to make the planning process more straightforward.
  • Share the plan and make sure employees have a chance to review it or ask questions. 
  • Make the document available in hard copy for easy access, or add it to a shared platform. 
  • Continually test, review, and maintain your plan to keep it up to date. 
  • Keep the BCP current with organizational and regulatory changes and updates.

Empower Your Teams to Build Business Continuity with Smartsheet

Empower your people to go above and beyond with a flexible platform designed to match the needs of your team — and adapt as those needs change. 

The Smartsheet platform makes it easy to plan, capture, manage, and report on work from anywhere, helping your team be more effective and get more done. Report on key metrics and get real-time visibility into work as it happens with roll-up reports, dashboards, and automated workflows built to keep your team connected and informed. 

When teams have clarity into the work getting done, there’s no telling how much more they can accomplish in the same amount of time.  Try Smartsheet for free, today.

Discover why over 90% of Fortune 100 companies trust Smartsheet to get work done.

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How to create an effective business continuity plan

A business continuity plan outlines procedures and instructions an organization must follow in the face of disaster, whether fire, flood, or cyberattack. Here’s how to create a plan that gives your business the best chance of surviving such an event.

Professional Meeting: Senior Businesswoman and Colleague in Discussion

The tumultuous events of the past several years have impacted practically every business. And with the number of extreme weather events, cyberattacks, and geopolitical conflicts continuing to rise, business leaders are bracing for the possibility of increasingly more frequent impactful incidents their organizations will need to respond to.

According to PwC’s 2023 Global Crisis and Resilience Survey , 96% of 1,812 business leaders said their organizations had experienced disruption in the past two years and 76% said their most serious disruption had a medium to high impact on operations.

It’s little wonder then that 89% of executives list resilience as one of their most important strategic priorities.

Yet at the same time, only 70% of respondents said they were confident in their organization’s ability to respond to disruptions, with PwC noting that its research shows that too many organizations “are lacking the foundational elements of resilience they need to be successful.”

A solid business continuity plan is one of those foundational elements.

“Every business should have the mindset that they will face a disaster, and every business needs a plan to address the different potential scenarios,” says Goh Ser Yoong, head of compliance at Advance.AI and a member of the Emerging Trends Working Group at the professional governance association ISACA.

A business continuity plan gives the organization the best shot at successfully navigating a disaster by providing ready-made directions on who should do what tasks in what order to keep the business viable.

Without such as a plan, the organization will take longer than necessary to recover from an event or incident — or may never recover at all.

What is a business continuity plan?

A business continuity plan (BCP) is a strategic playbook created to help an organization maintain or quickly resume business functions in the face of disruption, whether that disruption is caused by a natural disaster, civic unrest, cyberattack, or any other threat to business operations.

A business continuity plan outlines the procedures and instructions that the organization must follow during such an event to minimize downtime, covering business processes, assets, human resources, business partners, and more.

A business continuity plan is not the same as a disaster recovery plan , which focuses on restoring IT infrastructure and operations after a crisis. Still, a disaster recovery plan is part of the overall strategy to ensure business continuity, and the business continuity plan should inform the action items detailed in an organization’s disaster recovery plan. The two are tightly coupled, which is why they often are considered together and abbreviated as BCDR.

Why business continuity planning matters

Whether you operate a small business or a large corporation, it’s vital to retain and increase your customer base. There’s no better test of your capability to do so than right after an adverse event.

Because restoring IT is critical for most companies, numerous disaster recovery solutions are available. You can rely on IT to implement those solutions. But what about the rest of your business functions? Your company’s future depends on your people and processes. Being able to handle any incident effectively can have a positive effect on your company’s reputation and market value, and it can increase customer confidence.

Moreover, there are increasing consumer and regulatory expectations for both enterprise security and continuity today. Consequently, organizations must prioritize continuity planning to prevent not only business losses, but financial, legal, reputational, and regulatory consequences.

For example, the risk of having an organization’s “license to operate” withdrawn by a regulator or having conditions applied (retrospectively or prospectively) can adversely affect market value and consumer confidence.

Building (and updating) a business continuity plan

Whether building the organization’s first business continuity plan or updating an existing one, the process involves multiple essential steps.

Assess business processes for criticality and vulnerability: Business continuity planning “starts with understanding what’s most important to the business,” says Joe Nocera, principle in the cyber risk and regulatory practice at PwC, a professional services firm.

So the first step in building your business continuity plan is assessing your business processes to determine which are the most critical; which are the most vulnerable and to what type of events; and what are the potential losses if those processes go down for a day, a few days, or a week.

“This step essentially determines what you are trying to protect and what you are trying to keep up for systems,” says Todd Renner, senior managing director in the cybersecurity practice at FTI Consulting.

This assessment is more demanding than ever before because of the complexity of today’s hybrid workplace, the modern IT environment, and the reliance on business partners and third-party providers to perform or support critical processes.

Given that complexity, Goh says a thorough assessment requires an inventory of not only key processes but also the supporting components — including the IT systems, networks, people, and outside vendors — as well as the risks to those components.

This is essentially a business impact analysis.

Determine your organization’s RTO and RPO: The next step in building a business continuity plan is determining the organization’s recovery time objective (RTO), which is the target amount of time between point of failure and the resumption of operations, and the recovery point objective (RPO), which is the maximum amount of data loss an organization can withstand.

Each organization has its own RTO and RPO based on the nature of its business, industry, regulatory requirements, and other operational factors. Moreover, different parts of a business can have different RTOs and RPOs, which executives need to establish, Nocera says.

“When you meet with individual aspects of the business, everyone says everything [they do] is important; no one wants to say their part of the business is less critical, but in reality you have to have those challenging conversations and determinations about what is actually critical to the business and to business continuity,” he adds.

Detail the steps, roles, and responsibilities for continuity: Once that is done, business leaders should use the RTO and the RPO, along with the business impact analysis, to determine the specific tasks that need to happen, by whom, and in what order to ensure business continuity.

“It’s taking the key components of your analysis and designing a plan that outlines roles and responsibilities, about who does what. It gets into the nitty-gritty on how you’re going to keep the company up and running,” Renner explains.

One common business continuity planning tool is a checklist that includes supplies and equipment, the location of data backups and backup sites, where the plan is available and who should have it, and contact information for emergency responders, key personnel, and backup site providers.

Although the list of possible scenarios that could impact business operations can seem extensive, Goh says business leaders don’t have to compile an exhaustive list of potential incidents. Rather, they should compile a list that includes likely incidents as well as representative ones so that they can create responses that have a higher likelihood of ensuring continuity even when faced with an unimagined disaster.

“So even if it’s an unexpected event, they can pull those building blocks from the plan and apply them to the unique crisis they’re facing,” Nocera says.

The importance of testing the business continuity plan

Devising a business continuity plan is not enough to ensure preparedness; testing and practicing are other critical components.

Renner says testing and practicing offer a few important benefits.

First, they show whether or how well a plan will work.

Testing and practicing help prepare all stakeholders for an actual incident, helping them build the muscle memory needed to respond as quickly and as confidently as possible during a crisis.

They also help identify gaps in the devised plan. As Renner says: “Every tabletop exercise that I’ve ever done has been an eye-opener for everyone involved.”

Additionally, they help identify where there may be misalignment of objectives. For example, executives may have deprioritized the importance of restoring certain IT systems only to realize during a drill that those are essential for supporting critical processes.

Types and timing of tests

Many organizations test a business continuity plan two to four times a year. Experts say the frequency of tests, as well as reviews and updates, depends on the organization itself — its industry, its speed of innovation and transformation, the amount of turnover of key personnel, the number of business processes, and so on.

Common tests include tabletop exercises , structured walk-throughs, and simulations. Test teams are usually composed of the recovery coordinator and members from each functional unit.

A tabletop exercise usually occurs in a conference room with the team poring over the plan, looking for gaps and ensuring that all business units are represented therein.

In a structured walk-through, each team member walks through his or her components of the plan in detail to identify weaknesses. Often, the team works through the test with a specific disaster in mind. Some organizations incorporate drills and disaster role-playing into the structured walk-through. Any weaknesses should be corrected and an updated plan distributed to all pertinent staff.

Some experts also advise a full emergency evacuation drill at least once a year.

Meanwhile, disaster simulation testing — which can be quite involved — should still be performed annually. For this test, create an environment that simulates an actual disaster, with all the equipment, supplies and personnel (including business partners and vendors) who would be needed. The purpose of a simulation is to determine whether the organization and its staff can carry out critical business functions during an actual event.

During each phase of business continuity plan testing, include some new employees on the test team. “Fresh eyes” might detect gaps or lapses of information that experienced team members could overlook.

Reviewing and updating the business continuity plan should likewise happen on an ongoing basis.

“It should be a living document. It shouldn’t be shelved. It shouldn’t be just a check-the-box exercise,” Renner says.

Otherwise, plans go stale and are of no use when needed.

Bring key personnel together at least annually to review the plan and discuss any areas that must be modified.

Prior to the review, solicit feedback from staff to incorporate into the plan. Ask all departments or business units to review the plan, including branch locations or other remote units.

Furthermore, a strong business continuity function calls for reviewing the organization’s response in the event of an actual event. This allows executives and their teams to identify what the organization did well and where it needs to improve.

How to ensure business continuity plan support, awareness

One way to ensure your plan is not successful is to adopt a casual attitude toward its importance. Every business continuity plan must be supported from the top down. That means senior management must be represented when creating and updating the plan; no one can delegate that responsibility to subordinates. In addition, the plan is likely to remain fresh and viable if senior management makes it a priority by dedicating time for adequate review and testing.

Management is also key to promoting user awareness. If employees don’t know about the plan, how will they be able to react appropriately when every minute counts?

Although plan distribution and training can be conducted by business unit managers or HR staff, have someone from the top kick off training and punctuate its significance. It’ll have a greater impact on all employees, giving the plan more credibility and urgency.

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How to Write a Business Continuity Plan + Template

The goal of risk management is not to eliminate all risks but to effectively reduce their likelihood and impact. One way to do that is through business continuity planning. 

Having a business continuity plan in place can help your organization keep operating at some capacity during a disaster. 

Below, get straightforward answers to what a business continuity plan includes, why it’s important, and how to write one. You’ll also find a business continuity template to simplify the process.

What is a business continuity plan?

A business continuity plan is a document containing a predetermined set of procedures that describe how an organization will sustain its business operations during and after a significant disruption.

This disruption may be caused by a broad range of threats, including natural disasters, technical failures, and cyberattacks .

What is business continuity management?

A business continuity plan is one part of business continuity management (BCM). BCM includes risk assessment, response planning, recovery, and long-term maintenance of the policies and procedures developed, tested, and used when a crisis occurs.

What is the primary goal of business continuity planning?

The primary goal of business continuity planning is to identify preparations and recovery actions that can assist an organization in resuming operations and services as quickly as possible during and after a crisis.

For example, most business operations depend heavily on technology and automated systems, and the disruption of these systems for even a few hours may cause severe problems. Consider a Zoom outage. This may impact meetings with colleagues, customers, and prospects and important projects and deals as a result. A company with a business continuity plan that has identified a substitute tool for video meetings will be able to recover faster than a company without one. 

To ensure your business runs as smoothly as possible even when faced with system failures, cyber attacks, natural disasters, and other major disruptions, there must be an awareness of potential crises that could impact critical systems, tools, and skills of your organization and a plan to deal with them.

Business continuity planning is also important for getting and staying compliant with some privacy and security standards, including SOC 2®. Let’s take a look at this other reason for creating a BCP and keeping it up to date.

Recommended reading

5 components of business continuity plan

SOC 2 Compliance: Requirements, Audit Process, and Benefits for Business Growth

Why is a business continuity plan important for SOC 2 compliance?

A business continuity plan is part of the documentation that a SOC 2 auditor will likely review, along with your systems and security controls, to determine your level of compliance with the Trust Services Criteria (TSC) you’ve selected. This plan is especially important if you include Availability as a TSC in your SOC 2 audit . 

The Availability controls in SOC 2 focus on minimizing downtime. Risk assessment is therefore essential.

A SOC 2 auditor will most likely review whether your company has identified and thought of ways to mitigate environmental threats that could impact system availability, like hurricanes, tornados, and wildfires. The same process should be applied to “man made” threats, like theft and cyber attacks.

A SOC 2 auditor will also likely review whether your business continuity plan can be applied to unforeseen events that could impact your system availability and capacity, like a global pandemic. 

An auditor will also likely review if you’ve tested your BCP within the last year (at least).

Who is responsible for business continuity planning?

Business continuity planning must be a top-down effort. Meaning, it must have the support and willing participation of a director or senior manager at the company. While they will act as the executive sponsor, another individual should be appointed as the BCP coordinator. Depending on the size of the organization, a planning team representing all major areas of operations may also need to be appointed to assist the BCP coordinator.

This coordinator and/or team should be appropriately announced and empowered to execute on a range of responsibilities, including uncovering your business’s weaknesses and making plans to mitigate them, testing those plans to make sure they’re effective for different types of crises, and updating them as new threats emerge.

What’s the difference between business continuity, disaster recovery, and incident response plans?

There are several contingency and continuity plans that can help minimize the impact of catastrophic events. Let’s take a look at the three most common plans and how they differ from each other below.

Business continuity plan vs disaster recovery plan

The key difference between a business continuity and disaster recovery plan is that a BCP provides procedures for sustaining business operations while recovering from a significant disruption, whereas a DRP provides procedures for recovering information systems operations after a significant system disruption like a major software failure or a natural disaster by relocating them to an alternate location. 

Many organizations choose to combine their business continuity and disaster recovery plans into a single document. However, some choose to create them as standalone documents.

Business continuity plan vs incident response

The key difference between a business continuity plan and incident response plan is that a BCP provides procedures for sustaining business operations while recovering from a significant disruption, whereas an IRP provides procedures for mitigating and correcting a system after a security incident, like a virus or Trojan horse.

An IRP plan should detail a recovery process for when security incidents do happen.

This is another crucial document that a SOC 2 auditor will likely review to determine your level of compliance with the TSC you’ve selected.

What does a business continuity plan typically include?

A business continuity plan typically includes the following:

  • Mission critical services, processes, and resources: Every BCP should include a list of mission critical services, processes, and resources. These need to be recovered first when a BCP event occurs to minimize downtime.
  • Alternative location considerations: During a significant BCP event, an organization may need to use back-up data centers, back-up sites for operations, remote locations, or other alternative locations. These are typically documented in the BCP along with considerations like the accessibility of these alternative sites, transportation alternatives to these sites, the number of staff necessary to perform critical activities at these sites, and other resources that will be required. 
  • Vendor relationships: Organizations may categorize vendors into risk levels and evaluate the risk in their BCP plans. 
  • Telecommunications services and technology considerations: Organizations  typically detail strategies for maintaining operations during communications disruptions  in their BCP. This may include using multiple telecommunication providers, secondary phone lines, cloud technology, temporary phone lines, mobile telecom units and Wi-Fi for staff without power, as well as back-up mobile phone services with different carriers. 
  • Communication plans: Organizations typically establish communications plans with staff, customers, and other external third parties, including regulators, exchanges, and emergency officials, in their BCP as well. 
  • Regulatory and compliance considerations: Organizations typically include regulatory requirements in their BCPs and should regularly update them to include any new requirements. 
  • Review and testing methods: Organizations should include how their BCP is reviewed and tested and how often. For example, they may conduct full BCP tests at least annually or sooner if significant changes are made. They may also conduct employee training or require employees to review their BCP annually to ensure all personnel are familiar with the plan and their responsibilities. 
  • Recovery objectives: A BCP will typically include key recovery objectives that help organizations plan how quickly they need to recover data and systems in order to minimize disruptions and maintain smooth operations during unexpected events. These are defined below:  - RPO (Recovery Point Objective): RPO sets the limit for how much data loss a business can tolerate after a disruption. It defines the latest acceptable point in time to recover data, minimizing potential losses. - RTO (Recovery Time Objective): RTO is the maximum acceptable downtime for systems or processes. It indicates how quickly a business needs to recover and resume normal operations after a disruption.

Business continuity plan example

This business continuity plan example from Santa Cruz Health is designed for different facilities to customize to ensure measures are taken to prepare and pre-position resources to ensure continuity of mission critical services and processes in an event that disrupts normal operations and impacts essential operations of the facility. It is broken down into several sections, including: 

  • General : Describes the purpose of the BCP, as stated above.
  • Activation : Briefly describes when the plan should be activated. 
  • Overview : Briefly describes what the plan is, how it was developed, what steps need to be taken to ensure it’s effective, and what’s included. 
  • Continuity requirements : Lists the facility’s mission critical services, processes, equipment and supplies, IT applications, records, and business continuity personnel.
  • Continuity and recovery actions : Lists procedures following the occurrence of different BCP events, including loss of power, loss of HVAC, and relocation of departmental services to an alternate location.  

How to write a business continuity plan

Now it’s time to start formulating and building out your business continuity plan. To guide you through the process, we’ve broken the process down into six key steps. We’ve also provided a template below to help get you started.

5 components of business continuity plan

1. Identify and assess your risks.

The first major task of writing a BCP is identifying the risks or threats in your environment and determining how they might impact your operations. For example, some environmental threats may be likely to cause physical damage to your building. Other types of threats may have an impact on your staff and their families. 

The risks that are most threatening to your operations should be prioritized. 

2. Identify critical elements of your organization.

The next major task is identifying the tools, systems, and skills that are essential to your operations and how critical they are to recover. You can kick off brainstorming by posing the question, how do we achieve our goals? 

For example, let’s say one of your mission critical services is fundraising. In that case, a critical asset might be pledge cards. The vendor that prints your pledge cards would also be considered critical. 

When identifying these systems, tools, and skills, you’ll also want to determine what resources would be required to restore them and therefore resume the mission critical services and processes they are part of. Examples of resource requirements are facilities, personnel, equipment, software, data files, system components, and vital records.

This will help determine priority levels for sequencing recovery activities. In other words, what needs to be restored first in order to get back to work as quickly as possible during and after a crisis?

3. Identify ways to mitigate risks.

Now that you understand your organization’s unique risks and critical elements, you’re ready to create a plan of action. 

Start by identifying strategies that will eliminate the risks you identified in step 1 entirely. If that’s not possible, identify strategies that will lessen their impact. For example, it’s impossible to eliminate the threat of environmental threats like snowstorms entirely. Instead, you can create a procedure to have your employees and contractors work remotely if a snowstorm makes it impossible or difficult to get to the office. This will require that all employees and contractors have the appropriate supplies and equipment and receive the same communications. 

These mitigation strategies are designed to eliminate or lessen the impact of a threat before a crisis and should therefore be implemented as quickly as possible. 

4. Identify ways to prepare for and recover from the loss of any critical elements. 

Since it is impossible to eliminate all threats facing your organization, your next step is to identify as many strategies as possible for dealing with the loss of each critical element identified in step 2.  

For example, installing protective systems like a security system, fire alarm system, and antivirus software can all be considered strategies to prepare for and recover from the loss of critical elements caused by theft, vandalism, environmental hazards, cyber attacks, and other threats.

The goal is to come up with as many preparedness strategies as possible in order to best prepare and recover from the loss of mission critical assets during and after a crisis.

During the review or testing stage, you can remove any strategies that are too time-consuming or expensive.

5. Prepare for how you will respond after a crisis. 

Now that plans and strategies are in place, you can take steps to improve the efficiency and quality of your organization’s response to a crisis to help you get back to work as quickly as possible. 

Consider creating a recovery team that can assess your losses and initiate recovery actions after a crisis. The roles and responsibilities of this team can be documented in your BCP. 

6. Update and test your business continuity plan.

Your business continuity plan is a living document. It should be updated to reflect the evolving risks and needs of your business. Whether you’re integrating new software that suddenly crashes or bringing on a new management team member, your BCP should reflect these changes.

If there are no major changes impacting your business, you should still test your business continuity plan once a year at a minimum. This is a best practice and compliance requirement. You can use a variety of testing methods, including tabletop exercises and simulation tests. 

Testing and keeping documentation like this up to date is an important part of continuous compliance .

5 components of business continuity plan

What Is Continuous Compliance + How To Achieve It

Business continuity plan template.

Use this template to begin identifying the risks, critical elements, mitigation actions, and preparedness strategies that will make up the basic components of your business continuity plan.

5 components of business continuity plan

What are the benefits of a business continuity plan?

Implementing and maintaining an effective business continuity plan offers a range of benefits, including:

  • reduced costs and impact on business performance when a disruption occurs
  • a consistent, organization-wide approach to respond and recover from a significant disruption
  • assurance for clients, suppliers, regulators, and other stakeholders that the organization has systems and processes in place for business continuity
  • improved business performance and organizational resilience
  • a better understanding of the business, its critical issues, and areas of vulnerability

What are the 5 components of a business continuity plan?

While every business continuity plan is unique, five key components are: 

  • Risks and their potential business impact and likelihood of occurrence
  • Mission critical services, processes, and resources
  • Risk mitigation actions
  • Preparedness strategies to prepare for and recover from the loss of any critical elements
  • Training, testing, and plan maintenance

What are the 4 P’s of business continuity?

The four P's of business continuity are people, processes, premises, and providers. Below are definitions of each:

  • People : This includes your employees and customers.
  • Processes : This includes the technology and processes your business uses to keep everything running.
  • Premises : This includes the buildings and spaces from which your business operates.
  • Providers : This includes partners, vendors, and suppliers that your business relies on for resources. 

What is a real-life example of business continuity?

A real-life example of business continuity is the response to the Cape Town water crisis, which began in 2015.  During a period of severe drought, Cape Town implemented several response and recovery strategies which averted the catastrophe of running out of water — also known as “Day Zero.” This included the introduction of innovative pressure reduction methodologies to curb water losses, sustained reduction in water use, and effective public communication and awareness programs to avoid “Day Zero.” 

How do I write a BCM plan?

Below is a step-by-step process for writing a BCM plan:

  • Identify and assess risks (can use the 4 P’s)
  • Identify mission critical products, services, or functions
  • Evaluate the potential impact of risks and disruptions to critical elements
  • List actions to mitigate these risks
  • List strategies to prepare for and recover from the loss of any critical elements 
  • Maintain, review, and continuously update the business continuity plan

Why do business continuity plans fail?

Business continuity plans fail for a variety of reasons, with the most common being a lack of buy-in from top management. Other reasons are that no one is appointed to take ownership of business continuity planning, or the plan isn’t tested and updated regularly to keep up with changes affecting the business.

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What Are the 5 Components of a Business Continuity Plan

January 21, 2024

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In the face of ever-increasing uncertainties and unexpected disruptions, businesses must be equipped with a comprehensive business continuity plan to ensure their survival and minimize the impact of potential threats.

But what exactly are the five key components that make up a robust business continuity plan ? By delving into these components, we can uncover the crucial strategies and procedures that organizations need to adopt to effectively respond, recover, and resume their operations in the face of disruption.

From defining the purpose to emphasizing effective communication, testing, and understanding the importance of such a plan, to exploring the realm of continuity and disaster recovery , each component plays a vital role in safeguarding the long-term viability of a business.

Join us as we unravel the intricacies of these components and discover how they can help businesses navigate through turbulent times.

Definition and Purpose

The definition and purpose of a business continuity plan are key elements that provide operational guidelines for organizations to respond, recover, resume, and restore operations following a disruption .

It is crucial to have a clear understanding of these components to effectively navigate through unplanned disruptions and minimize their impact on the entire business.

Key Elements

A critical component of a business continuity plan is its definition and purpose, which serves as a documented procedure guiding organizations to respond, recover, resume, and restore operations following a disruption, aiming to minimize its impact.

The key components of a business continuity plan include identifying potential threats, developing strategies for recovery, and establishing crisis communication protocols.

By identifying potential threats, organizations can proactively plan and mitigate risks to minimize the impact on their operations.

Recovery strategies involve outlining steps to restore critical functions, such as data recovery and infrastructure restoration.

Additionally, crisis communication protocols ensure effective communication with stakeholders, employees, and customers during a disruption, providing timely updates and instructions.

Incorporating these key components into a business continuity plan helps organizations maintain resilience and minimize the impact of disruptions.

Operational Guidelines

Operational guidelines in business continuity planning involve documented procedures for responding, recovering, resuming, and restoring operations following a disruption.

These guidelines play a vital role in ensuring that an organization can effectively navigate through and recover from various disruptions. They provide a clear roadmap for how to handle different scenarios and minimize the impact on the business.

Some key components of operational guidelines in a business continuity plan include :

  • Disaster recovery : This subset focuses on data recovery to minimize disruption time and data loss. It is essential to have robust strategies in place to quickly restore critical systems and information.
  • Identifying weaknesses in the business : Through the development of operational guidelines, organizations can identify weaknesses and vulnerabilities within their processes and systems. This allows them to proactively address these issues and strengthen their overall resilience.
  • Lessons learned : Operational guidelines should incorporate lessons learned from previous disruptions. By analyzing past incidents, organizations can identify areas for improvement and implement measures to prevent similar disruptions in the future.

Communication

Business_Continuity_Plan

Effective communication is a critical component of a business continuity plan. Particularly when it comes to stakeholder communication and crisis communication.

During a disruption, clear and timely communication with employees, shareholders, users, customers, and key personnel is essential. It is necessary to keep everyone informed and aligned.

Stakeholder communication ensures that all parties are aware of the situation and are working towards a common goal.

Crisis communication helps address concerns, provide updates, and maintain trust during an event.

Stakeholder Communication

During a disruption, maintaining clear and timely communication with stakeholders such as employees, shareholders, users, customers, and key personnel is essential for effective business continuity .

In the context of a business continuity plan , stakeholder communication plays a critical role in ensuring that all parties are informed, engaged, and aligned throughout the recovery process.

Here are three key components of stakeholder communication:

  • Roles and Responsibilities : Clearly defining and communicating the roles and responsibilities of each stakeholder helps ensure a coordinated and effective response to disruptions. This includes designating communication leads, establishing communication channels, and outlining the expectations for each stakeholder’s involvement.
  • Crisis Communication Strategy : Having a well-defined crisis communication strategy in place enables organizations to communicate with stakeholders during an event. This strategy should include protocols for disseminating timely updates, addressing concerns, and providing reassurance to stakeholders.
  • Utilizing Technology : Leveraging technology, such as social media platforms, allows organizations to provide real-time updates to customers and stakeholders. This helps maintain transparency and keeps stakeholders informed about the status of operations, recovery efforts, and any potential impact on services.

Crisis Communication

Clear and effective crisis communication is essential for organizations to navigate disruptions and ensure stakeholders are informed and engaged.

As a key component of a business continuity plan, crisis communication involves establishing clear communication protocols to convey potential disruptions to stakeholders.

It is important to define the roles and responsibilities of the crisis communication team to ensure prompt and effective communication during crises.

Coordinating with external partners and suppliers is crucial to ensure seamless communication during disruptions.

Training employees on crisis communication and regularly testing communication systems help ensure readiness.

Developing a crisis communication plan is also necessary to guide communication efforts during disruptive events.

business continuity

Testing is a crucial aspect of a business continuity plan as it helps in assessing its effectiveness and identifying any weaknesses or gaps.

By conducting regular tests, organizations can evaluate their response to different disruptive events and make necessary improvements.

Testing also ensures that the plan remains updated and adaptable to evolving threats, ultimately enhancing the organization’s ability to maintain continuity during challenging times.

Importance of Testing

The significance of testing in a business continuity plan cannot be overstated. Testing plays a crucial role in ensuring the effectiveness of the plan and the organization’s ability to recover from disruptions.

Here are some reasons why testing is important in business continuity planning :

  • Identifying gaps and weaknesses : Testing helps to identify any gaps or weaknesses in the plan, allowing organizations to address them and make necessary improvements.
  • Evaluating response : By testing the plan, organizations can evaluate their response to different disruptive events and determine if their strategies and procedures are effective.
  • Anticipating changes : Testing allows organizations to anticipate changes in their environment and adjust their continuity plans accordingly.

Identifying Plan Weaknesses

After evaluating the response to different disruptive events and identifying gaps and weaknesses in the business continuity plan through testing, the next step is to focus on identifying plan weaknesses.

This is crucial for implementing a business continuity plan that is effective and reliable. By identifying plan weaknesses, organizations can take proactive measures to address these weaknesses and improve the overall resilience of their operations.

One effective way to identify plan weaknesses is through testing. By conducting regular tests and simulations, organizations can evaluate the effectiveness of their business continuity plan in real-life scenarios.

This allows them to assess their response to different disruptive events and uncover any weaknesses or gaps that may exist in their plan.

To help avoid plan weaknesses, organizations can consider the following key components:

Evaluating Response Effectiveness

To assess the effectiveness of a business continuity plan , organizations must evaluate their response to different disruptive events through rigorous testing and simulations.

Testing is a crucial component of a business continuity plan as it helps organizations identify any gaps or weaknesses in their plan and evaluate their ability to respond effectively to disruptions.

Through testing, organizations can assess the readiness of their key components, such as business processes and service levels, and make necessary improvements.

It allows them to validate the effectiveness of their plan and ensure that it aligns with their objectives and requirements.

5 components of business continuity plan

The importance of business continuity planning cannot be overstated. By minimizing operational disruptions, businesses can maintain their operations and protect their reputation.

In addition, having a well-developed plan ensures the long-term sustainability of the organization .

Minimizing Operational Disruptions

Minimizing operational disruptions is of utmost importance for maintaining business continuity and ensuring organizational resilience.

A well-prepared business continuity plan plays a crucial role in achieving this goal.

Here are three key components that help in minimizing operational disruptions:

  • Recovery Point : The business continuity plan should define the acceptable level of data loss in case of disruptions. This ensures that the organization can recover to a point where data loss is minimal, reducing the impact on operations.
  • Data Loss Prevention : Implementing robust backup and data protection measures is essential for minimizing operational disruptions. Regularly backing up critical data and ensuring its integrity can significantly reduce the risk of data loss and enable quick recovery.
  • Effective Response Mechanisms : Having well-defined procedures and protocols in the business continuity plan helps in rapidly responding to disruptions. This includes clear roles and responsibilities, communication channels, and escalation procedures, ensuring a swift and coordinated response to minimize operational disruptions.

Protecting Business Reputation

Maintaining a strong business reputation is a critical aspect of business continuity planning , as it ensures trust and credibility with customers and stakeholders, contributing to long-term success.

Protecting business reputation should be an important consideration when developing a business continuity plan .

A positive reputation can increase customer loyalty and attract new business opportunities, which is crucial for the survival of the entire business.

On the other hand, negative publicity or reputation damage can lead to financial losses and hinder the company’s ability to recover from disruptions.

Businesses with a positive reputation are better positioned to withstand crises and recover more effectively.

Therefore, including strategies to protect and repair the company’s reputation should be one of the key components of a comprehensive business continuity plan .

Ensuring Long-Term Sustainability

Ensuring long-term sustainability is a crucial aspect of business continuity planning , as it plays a vital role in the survival and growth of a company.

With a comprehensive business continuity plan in place, organizations can effectively navigate disruptions and minimize their impact on all aspects of the business.

This is particularly important in today’s environment, where global pandemics , natural disasters , and cyber-attacks are on the rise.

By having a plan in place, companies can bring their operations back up quickly, reducing revenue loss and mitigating potential damage to their brand reputation.

Additionally, a business continuity plan supports long-term sustainability by enabling organizations to adapt to changing market conditions and embrace digital transformation.

It provides a roadmap for resilience and ensures that the company can continue to thrive even in the face of adversity.

  • Minimizes impact of disruptions
  • Reduces revenue loss and brand impact
  • Supports digital transformation and adaptability

Continuity and Disaster Recovery

What Are the 5 Components of a Business Continuity Plan

Continuity and Disaster Recovery are essential components of a business continuity plan.

Resilience strategies ensure that an organization can withstand and recover from disruptions.

Overlapping recovery strategies provide a comprehensive approach to minimizing downtime and damage.

Resilience Strategies

To effectively respond to disruptions and minimize the impact on business operations, organizations must implement resilience strategies, specifically focusing on continuity and disaster recovery.

These strategies are crucial components of a business continuity plan and play a vital role in ensuring the organization’s ability to withstand and recover from disruptive events.

Resilience strategies involve analyzing risks and vulnerabilities through a comprehensive risk assessment process .

This helps identify potential challenges and allows organizations to develop proactive measures to mitigate those risks.

Additionally, establishing clear roles and responsibilities for key personnel during a disruption ensures effective coordination and decision-making.

Furthermore, resilience strategies involve developing and implementing robust communication protocols to ensure timely and accurate dissemination of information to all stakeholders.

This enables organizations to effectively manage and address potential disruptions.

Overlapping Recovery Strategies

To effectively respond to disruptions and ensure business resilience , organizations must implement overlapping recovery strategies that combine continuity and disaster recovery plans .

These strategies involve both proactive and reactive measures to minimize the impact of disruptions and keep the business running smoothly.

One approach to implementing overlapping recovery strategies is by identifying critical business functions, processes, and dependencies.

This helps prioritize recovery efforts and ensures that the most important aspects of the business are addressed first.

Another key aspect of overlapping recovery strategies is thorough testing and maintenance. Regular testing helps identify any weaknesses or gaps in the plans and allows for adjustments to be made accordingly.

It is also important to ensure seamless integration between the continuity and disaster recovery plans to maximize their effectiveness.

Communication and coordination between the continuity and disaster recovery teams are crucial for successful implementation.

This ensures that everyone is on the same page and can work together towards the common goal of business resilience .

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the 5 steps of a business continuity plan.

The five steps of a business continuity plan involve defining the purpose, establishing communication protocols, conducting testing, recognizing the importance of resilience, and implementing strategies for continuity and disaster recovery.

What Are the 4 Pillars of Bcp?

The four pillars of a business continuity plan include definition and purpose, communication, testing, and continuity and disaster recovery.

These components work together to ensure organizations can respond, recover, and resume operations following a disruption.

What Are the Parts of a Business Continuity Plan?

The components of a business continuity plan include definition and purpose, communication, testing, importance, and continuity and disaster recovery.

These components help organizations respond, recover, and resume operations following a disruption and minimize the impact on the business.

What Are the 4 P’s of Business Continuity?

The four P’s of business continuity include 1) Definition and Purpose, 2) Communication, 3) Testing, and 4) Continuity and Disaster Recovery.

These components guide organizations in responding, recovering, and restoring operations during disruptions.

A business continuity plan is crucial for organizations to effectively respond to and recover from disruptions.

By understanding and implementing the five components of a business continuity plan, businesses can minimize the impact of unforeseen events and ensure the continuity of their operations.

These components include:

  • Definition and purpose: Clearly defining the objectives and scope of the plan, as well as identifying critical business functions and resources.
  • Communication: Establishing effective communication channels and protocols to ensure timely and accurate information sharing during a crisis.
  • Testing: Regularly testing and reviewing the plan to identify any gaps or areas for improvement, and ensuring that all employees are familiar with their roles and responsibilities.
  • Importance: Recognizing the importance of business continuity planning and the potential consequences of not having a plan in place.
  • Continuity and disaster recovery: Developing strategies and processes to enable the organization to continue operating during a disruption, as well as recovering and returning to normal operations as quickly as possible.

This proactive approach enables organizations to navigate the rapidly evolving business landscape and maintain the long-term viability of their operations.

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Chris Ekai is a Risk Management expert with over 10 years of experience in the field. He has a Master’s(MSc) degree in Risk Management from University of Portsmouth and is a CPA and Finance professional. He currently works as a Content Manager at Risk Publishing, writing about Enterprise Risk Management, Business Continuity Management and Project Management.

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7 Elements and Components of a Business Continuity Plan

Data breaches, natural disasters, and other business disruptions can significantly impact your business, but they don’t have to. By understanding and applying the key elements of a business continuity plan (BCP), you can reduce the threat of disasters by guaranteeing a quick recovery.

A BCP serves as an emergency response plan that is put in place to ensure your business processes are maintained around the clock – even when an unexpected disaster occurs.

However, creating a complete business continuity plan requires specialized IT knowledge. With more than 90% of enterprises already completed their digital transformation, IT expertise has become increasingly integral to every possible business disaster.

At the same time, it’s also necessary to possess a thorough understanding of the essential elements of a business continuity plan. Without one, businesses are ill-equipped to face disasters – which is a startling fact given that an estimated 48% of small businesses don’t have a BCP in place.

In this article, we’ll explore what should be included in a business continuity plan, and discuss how you can create a business continuity plan of your own.

Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity – The Differences

While similar (and often used interchangeably), DRPs and BCPs differ greatly from each other.

The main difference between the two is that a DRP helps businesses resume IT access post-disaster, while a BCP helps businesses remain operational. 

What are the Elements of a Business Continuity Plan?

Now that you understand the difference between disaster recovery and business continuity, let’s take a closer look at some of the key elements of a business continuity plan.

1. A Dependable Business Continuity Team

When disaster strikes, your team can’t afford to waste any time determining who is responsible for getting things back on track.

Your business continuity team should consist of key personnel who are not only trained to respond to crises, but who also participate throughout the disaster recovery and business continuity planning and testing stages.

These key employees should include personnel at all levels of your company, including local branches.

2. Contact Information

Once your business continuity team is assembled, another key component is making sure you’re able to communicate essential information to all affected parties immediately with a list of contact information that includes:

  • Stakeholders
  • Backup operators
  • Third-party vendors
  • Anyone else crucial to your BCP
  • BCP team members (and their roles)

3. An Effective Crisis Communications Plan

Don’t let the outside world hear about your disaster from someone else first. Get ahead of a potential fallout with an effective crisis communications plan that includes templated social media posts and press releases that you can tailor to deal with any situation.

4. An In-Depth Risk Assessment

In order to plan for potential risks, you must first determine what those risks are. A risk assessment, another key component of a business continuity plan, is the process through which you identify risks (e.g., natural disasters, cyber attacks, flooding, etc.) and vulnerabilities (e.g., people, property, reputation, etc.).

5. Business Impact Analysis (BIA)

Perhaps the most vital component of a business continuity plan, the BIA identifies the impact that disruption would have on all aspects of the business.

This should include potential legal, financial and reputational consequences of disasters, and should outline what you require (including an estimated time) to recover.

6. A Detailed Response Plan

Once you’ve completed the aforementioned key components of your business continuity plan, it’s time to create the plan itself.

As one of the most important elements of a business continuity plan, your response should be exhaustive and take into account every risk, vulnerability and impact you’ve identified.

You’ll also need to rank your risks based on likelihood and vulnerabilities based on importance, and determine which impacts would be most damaging.

Based on this, you can decide on the strategies you’ll use to both respond to disasters, and prevent them (e.g., regular data backup). This is a process that your team shouldn’t take lightly, and one that you likely can’t complete without help from your in-house IT team or experienced managed services provider.

7. Testing Your Business Continuity Plan

Even the most expertly designed business continuity plan components can become meaningless if they’re not kept up-to-date through regular testing.

Effective testing ensures that your plan fits your current needs, based on any changes to your IT infrastructure, business processes, etc.

This element should include regular reviews (and, as necessary, updates) and simulations. A solid MSP will spearhead the testing for you, and guarantee that you’re always prepared for the worst.

Improve Your Business Continuity Plan Components With TAG

Understanding the elements of a business continuity plan is important for every business leader, but familiarity alone is not enough to protect your company.

If your business is trying to create a business continuity plan, or needs assistance with updating your existing one, we can help.

At Technology Advisory Group, our experts have helped companies across Rhode Island and New England mitigate business disruptions by helping them understand the key elements of a business continuity plan to improve their resilience and emergency response.

For more information about how we can help you develop and implement a plan of your own, contact us today to schedule a consultation with our business continuity specialists.

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5 components of business continuity plan

Business Continuity Planning

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Organize a business continuity team and compile a  business continuity plan  to manage a business disruption. Learn more about how to put together and test a business continuity plan with the videos below.

Business Continuity Plan Supporting Resources

  • Business Continuity Plan Situation Manual
  • Business Continuity Plan Test Exercise Planner Instructions
  • Business Continuity Plan Test Facilitator and Evaluator Handbook

Business Continuity Training Videos

The Business Continuity Planning Suite is no longer supported or available for download.

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Business Continuity Training Introduction

An overview of the concepts detailed within this training. Also, included is a humorous, short video that introduces viewers to the concept of business continuity planning and highlights the benefits of having a plan. Two men in an elevator experience a spectrum of disasters from a loss of power, to rain, fire, and a human threat. One man is prepared for each disaster and the other is not.

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Business Continuity Training Part 1: What is Business Continuity Planning?

An explanation of what business continuity planning means and what it entails to create a business continuity plan. This segment also incorporates an interview with a company that has successfully implemented a business continuity plan and includes a discussion about what business continuity planning means to them.

Business Continuity Training Part 2: Why is Business Continuity Planning Important?

An examination of the value a business continuity plan can bring to an organization. This segment also incorporates an interview with a company that has successfully implemented a business continuity plan and includes a discussion about how business continuity planning has been valuable to them.

Business Continuity Training Part 3: What's the Business Continuity Planning Process?

An overview of the business continuity planning process. This segment also incorporates an interview with a company about its process of successfully implementing a business continuity plan.

Business Continuity Training Part 3: Planning Process Step 1

The first of six steps addressed in this Business Continuity Training, which detail the process of building a business continuity plan. This step addresses how organizations should “prepare” to create a business continuity plan.

Business Continuity Training Part 3: Planning Process Step 2

The second of six steps addressed in this Business Continuity Training, which detail the process of building a business continuity plan. This step addresses how organizations should “define” their business continuity plan objectives.

Business Continuity Training Part 3: Planning Process Step 3

The third of six steps addressed in this Business Continuity Training, which detail the process of building a business continuity plan. This step addresses how organizations should “identify” and prioritize potential risks and impacts.

Business Continuity Training Part 3: Planning Process Step 4

The fourth of six steps addressed in this Business Continuity Training, which detail the process of building a business continuity plan. This step addresses how organizations should “develop” business continuity strategies.

Business Continuity Training Part 3: Planning Process Step 5

The fifth of six steps addressed in this Business Continuity Training, which detail the process of building a business continuity plan. This step addresses how organizations should define their “teams” and tasks.

Business Continuity Training Part 3: Planning Process Step 6

The sixth of six steps addressed in this Business Continuity Training, which detail the process of building a business continuity plan. This step addresses how organizations should “test” their business continuity plans. View on YouTube

Last Updated: 12/21/2023

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Components of a Business Continuity Plan

Published on December 01, 2023

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Everything you need to know about business continuity, straight to your inbox.

If you face an emergency tomorrow, how quickly would your business be able to bounce back? The answer depends on how robust your business continuity plan (BCP) is.

Business continuity plan elements include all the vital information companies need to keep operating in disruptive events. They identify an organisation’s essential business processes and systems, along with the pertinent details for maintaining them.

You must consider a wide range of disruptions when creating your BCP. It should address several possible threats, such as human error, natural disasters, hacking, and another pandemic, to name a few.

Let’s explore the key components of a robust business continuity plan so companies can successfully prepare for any threats and effectively protect their brands’ reputation and continued health.

components of business continuity plan

What Are Two Necessary Elements of Business Continuity Planning?

Although there are many things to consider, two primary business continuity plan components are:

1. Data backup, protection, and recovery

2. Personnel, procedures, and communication

These are the main components of a strong business continuity plan. Keep reading to gain a deeper insight into the major aspects of healthy BCP creation and management.

Breaking Down the Basic Elements of a Business Continuity Plan

Perhaps the most valuable resource for most businesses today is data. In case of an emergency, organisations need to know their data will be safe. That’s what makes a proper BCP so imperative.

Start by identifying the dedicated key personnel needed for data recovery. Moreover, all the most critical departments should include someone well-versed and trained in the management processes set forth by the organisation’s BCP, as well as a designated, clear chain of command to follow.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, you need to thoroughly outline procedures for the company’s functionality to be promptly and comprehensively recovered. This should include a detailed strategy to prioritise the identified critical business functions and assets that are most critical, like network systems, essential equipment, vital documents, and more. To fully protect them, all the possible threats and risks must be identified and planned for.

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Here Are 5 Key Elements of Business Continuity Plan Management

Whether equipping your digital security to prevent the incidence of a cyber attack that could cost your company immeasurably in the form of data loss or creating an action plan in the case of a potential natural disaster, the value of formulating a functional BCP is clear.

What are the 3 elements of your business continuity strategy?

1. Data backup (onsite and offsite), including all financial documents, contracts, etc.

2. Designation of roles and responsibilities with full contact information and a term glossary

3. Risk assessment , detailed guidelines, and itemised procedures for each potential threat

In addition, the following components are also extremely important:

4. Outline a communication strategy and specify the official chain of command

5. Testing, training, and ongoing maintenance and revision to ensure all plans are up-to-date

Setting forth all these particulars well in advance ensures a swift response from team leaders within your organisation, allowing for essential business functions to continue as smoothly as possible in a crisis.

Always Conduct an Initial Business Impact Analysis & Risk Assessment

When approaching the task of developing a valuable business continuity plan , organisations must run a business impact analysis to identify the possible vulnerabilities and risks their business faces, both externally and internally.

With solid information upon which to base your basic business continuity requirements and plans, each threat – be it an IT disturbance, a supplier failure, or a flood – can be appropriately targeted and prepared for. Only by knowing what you’re potentially facing can you begin to take the correct steps for their mitigation and prevention.

Additionally, the initial, comprehensive business impact analysis should account for the potential outcomes and consequences of possible disruptions to the business operations of the organisation. Anticipating the impact on essential functions of the business is necessary to determine the recovery time that you need as well as the actual costs that may be incurred.

components of business continuity planning

Preparation is Key

Understanding the risks and their consequences is a major first step in developing the best business continuity plan to prepare for them.

Each risk that you identify through the business impact analysis should be considered in developing a comprehensive BCP. Every unique strategy should aim to either prevent or minimise the possible problem.

With a detailed approach for each scenario, you can outline action items, along with key players and implementation procedures. You should take measures to ensure a quick and relevant response strategy, like establishing reliable backup lines of communication.

Roles, Responsibilities, and Resources

Make sure each individual involved is both identified and fully prepared to perform their clearly defined roles and duties, helping to foster more efficient reactions and responses.

Moreover, you must prepare the appropriate resources these staff members will need in the wake of a disruption to effectively perform their responsibilities.

This may include tools to provide dependable communication – an asset while responding to any disruption. Without effective communication, even the most well-laid recovery strategies and plans may be rendered useless. Also, consider the available backup methods for maintaining client and supplier communications during a disruption.

Finally, a comprehensive BCP usually includes a complete contact list and templates for possible press releases and online posts. These pre-planned tools will expedite the lines of communication during a crisis to better keep everyone promptly updated.

To learn more about the international standard for business continuity management system requirements, refer to ISO 22301 .

Testing, 1, 2, 3

Rather than keep your BCP in the realm of hypotheticals, an integral step in creating effective plans is to practice them. Put your plans into action with testing and training. it's essential to help you refine them so they’re able to perform better in the hour of need.

Test your BCP scenarios in realistic drills and assess the response of your team so it can be improved over time. Doing this can prove invaluable during a real crisis. For this reason, team members should remain aware of the BCP and the role they may play in the business continuity plans and strategies.

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Working with Business Continuity Plan Management Specialists

Proper business continuity planning is a must. It lowers the risk of expensive losses and outages. Organisations must be proactive in formulating the optimal plan for times of crisis that demonstrates a complete understanding of all existing vulnerabilities and possible threats.

It’s an integral process that requires serious inspection and skilled execution, which means it often requires investing in the dependable services of those who specialise in the creation of efficient and effective business plans.

Don’t run the risk of any costly and unexpected business interruptions down the road. Here at C2, we’ll help you prepare for the unexpected so you can keep serving your customers in their every time of need.

Frequently Asked Questions

Here are some of the most common inquiries surrounding successful business continuity management.

1. What are the 3 main areas of business continuity management?

An organisation’s BCP addresses what would happen in the event of a system failure or other potentially business-halting emergency. If your company went offline tomorrow, how would you proceed?

To function properly, a BCP should include the following 3 areas:

1. Identifying all possible points of failure

2. Establishing various risk control systems

3. Testing disruption workarounds to maintain key processes and functions

2. What are the 5 components of a business continuity plan?

Constructing your ideal BCP requires these important components:

1. Perform a comprehensive risk assessment, a business impact analysis, and documentation of all data at the starting point. Ask the question: if everything suddenly went offline, what are the critical controls for maintaining security and continued operations?

2. Evaluate how many team members you need for each essential centre of operations to continue running in a crisis. Additionally, consider the skills your staff need for them to perform all the required functions.

3. Executives, team leaders, and IT administrators should collaborate to break down the BCP’s scope and purpose to design and formulate a complete plan. It will typically include an array of essential elements, such as diagrams, checklists, and protocols for emergency management; guidelines on how and when to initiate them; and a full glossary of terms.

4. Once you have developed a comprehensive plan, you must implement, test, and adjust it as needed for optimal performance. This includes training all personnel in the plan’s execution.

5. Define formal processes for the scheduled review, ongoing management, and updated revision of official, step-by-step continuity procedures.

3. Why is it important for organisations to possess a robust BCP?

With a stellar business continuity plan, companies can significantly reduce the likelihood that disruption will halt their business and incur unwanted costs.

A proper BCP aids organisations in responding promptly and confidently in the event of an emergency or disaster. As a result, businesses can reduce disaster recovery times, support ongoing customer satisfaction, and promote confidence among their staff members.

At C2, we have the tools and resources to generate the most powerful and comprehensive business continuity plan for your organisation. Book a demo today and find out how we can help!

Written by Grace Lowe

Operations Manager at Continuity2

With a solid background in sales and support, Grace manages day-to-day activities so that business processes run smoothly, efficiently, and effectively. For the past 3 years, Grace has built and maintained strong relationships with clients, maximising their Business Continuity and Resilience efforts to the fullest.

C2 Author Grace 1

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Top 5: Important components of a Business Continuity Plan

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In today's ever-changing business landscape, it is crucial for organizations to have a robust business continuity plan in place. A business continuity plan ensures that operations can continue smoothly during unexpected interruptions or disasters, minimizing the impact on productivity, revenue, and customer satisfaction. In this guide, we will discuss the top 5 important components of a business continuity plan and how Fixinc, a trusted consultancy, can support your organization with this vital process.

Risk Assessment and Business Impact Analysis

Before creating a business continuity plan, it is essential to identify potential risks and assess their impact on your organization. Fixinc provides expert support in conducting comprehensive risk assessments and business impact analyses. Their team of experienced consultants will help you identify vulnerabilities, analyze potential threats, and determine the critical areas that may be affected during an interruption or disaster. By understanding these risks, you can develop strategies and allocate resources effectively to mitigate their impact.

Emergency Response and Incident Management

An effective business continuity plan must include clear procedures for responding to emergencies and managing incidents. Fixinc specializes in designing emergency response frameworks and incident management protocols tailored to the specific needs of your organization. With their expertise, you can establish a structured approach to deal with various scenarios, including natural disasters, cyberattacks, or supply chain disruptions. By having the right strategies and processes in place, you can minimize downtime and ensure a swift recovery.

Business Continuity Strategies and Solutions

Once potential risks have been identified and emergency response procedures established, it is crucial to develop business continuity strategies and solutions. Fixinc offers comprehensive support in this area, helping you develop resilience plans that encompass backup systems, alternative work locations, and redundancy measures. Their team of experts will work closely with you to create customized solutions that align with your organization's unique requirements, ensuring that critical business functions can continue without interruption, even during unforeseen events.

Communication and Stakeholder Management

Effective communication is a vital component of any business continuity plan. It ensures that all stakeholders, including employees, customers, suppliers, and regulators, are informed and engaged during an interruption or crisis. Fixinc can provide expert guidance in developing communication plans, including crisis communication protocols and tools. Their consultants understand the importance of timely and accurate information dissemination and can help your organization establish effective communication channels to keep everyone informed and minimize any negative impacts.

Testing, Training, and Continuous Improvement

A business continuity plan is only effective if it is regularly tested, updated, and refined. Fixinc offers comprehensive testing and training services for your organization's continuity plan. They conduct realistic simulations and exercises to assess the plan's effectiveness and identify areas for improvement. Their team also provides training sessions to ensure that employees are familiar with their roles and responsibilities during an interruption. With Fixinc's support, your organization can achieve a culture of continuous improvement, ensuring that your business continuity plan remains up-to-date and effective.

Having a well-designed and implemented business continuity plan is crucial for every organization. By addressing the top 5 important components discussed in this guide, you can enhance your organization's resilience and protect it from potential disruptions. Fixinc, a leading consultancy, can provide expert support throughout the entire process, from risk assessment to plan implementation, testing, and training. Their expertise and commitment to excellence will help your organization build a robust business continuity plan that ensures continuity and minimizes the impact of unforeseen events. Contact Fixinc today to secure the future of your business.

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The 10 Components of a Business Continuity Plan

Business continuity is essential in ensuring that the operations of a company do not get interrupted even in emergencies. Learn more about the components of a Business Continuity Plan here.

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As the world becomes increasingly interconnected and reliant on technology, the importance of having a robust business continuity plan (BCP) in place is more important than ever. Many organizations think they are prepared for an emergency simply because they have insurance, but this is only a small part of the puzzle. A comprehensive BCP must address all aspects of the organization, from people and facilities to processes and technology. In this article, we will explore the 10 key components of a business continuity plan and more.

.css-706nk0{position:absolute;margin-left:-2em;margin-top:3px;font-size:0.5em;color:#22445F;opacity:0;} .css-14nvrlq{display:inline-block;line-height:1;height:1em;background-color:currentColor;-webkit-mask:url(https://assets.xometry.com/fontawesome-pro/v6/svgs/light/link.svg) no-repeat center/contain content-box;mask:url(https://assets.xometry.com/fontawesome-pro/v6/svgs/light/link.svg) no-repeat center/contain content-box;-webkit-mask:url(https://assets.xometry.com/fontawesome-pro/v6/svgs/light/link.svg) no-repeat center/contain content-box;aspect-ratio:640/512;vertical-align:-15%;}.css-14nvrlq:before{content:"";} What Is Business Continuity?

Business continuity is the ability of an organization to keep its operations running in the event of an interruption. The goal of business continuity is to minimize the disruption to the organization and to ensure that it can resume its operations as quickly as possible. While business continuity is often thought of in terms of natural disasters, it can also apply to other types of disruptions, such as power outages, cyberattacks, and pandemics.

What Is a Business Continuity Plan?

A business continuity plan (BCP) is a document that outlines how an organization will continue to function during and after an emergency or major disruptive event. The goal of a BCP is to help the organization minimize downtime and maintain its core functions and operations. Tasks that are typically included in a BCP are: maintaining customer service, keeping the lights on, and ensuring safety. A well-executed BCP will help to minimize the financial and reputational impact of an emergency. A BCP is not a static document; it should be regularly reviewed and updated to reflect changes in the organization, such as new facilities, processes, or technology.

Importance of a Business Continuity Plan

A high-quality business continuity plan helps to ensure that the organization is prepared to respond quickly and efficiently to an emergency, minimizing the damage to its reputation. Some of its benefits include:

  • Helps to ensure the safety of employees, customers, and other stakeholders.
  • Helps to minimize downtime and maintain operations.
  • Helps to protect the organization’s reputation.
  • Helps to minimize the financial impact of an emergency.

The Components of a Business Continuity Plan

To have an effective business continuity plan, the following components must be present:

.css-2xf3ee{font-size:0.6em;margin-left:-2em;position:absolute;color:#22445F;} 1. Business Impact Analysis

The first step in creating a business continuity plan is to conduct a business impact analysis (BIA). This is a process of identifying and assessing the potential impact of an interruption to critical business operations. The BIA will help you to identify which business processes are critical to the survival of the organization and which can be interrupted without major consequences. 

2. Risk Assessment

Once you have identified the business processes that are critical to the organization, the next step is to assess the risks that could potentially disrupt those processes. This includes natural disasters, power outages, cyberattacks, and pandemics. Risk assessment will help you to prioritize the relevant business processes and create a plan to mitigate the risks.

3. Business Continuity Strategy

The business continuity strategy outlines the steps that will be taken to keep the organization running in the event of an interruption. The strategy should be tailored to the specific needs of the organization and should address all aspects of the business continuity plan, from people and facilities to processes and technology.

4. Recovery Team

The recovery team is responsible for implementing the business continuity plan. The team should be made up of key personnel from all departments of the organization. The team should meet regularly to review the business continuity plan and to identify any changes that need to be made.

5. Training

All members of the business recovery team should be trained in their roles and responsibilities. Training should also be provided to all employees, so they know what to do in the event of an emergency.

6. Business Continuity Exercises

Business continuity exercises are simulations of an interruption to business processes. They are conducted to test the business continuity plan and to identify any weaknesses. Exercises should be conducted regularly and should be adapted to reflect changes in the organization.

7. Communication

Communication is essential for keeping employees, customers, and other stakeholders informed during an interruption. The business continuity plan should include a communication plan that outlines who will be responsible for communicating with different groups of people. The communication plan should also include a method for distributing information, such as email, text message, or social media.

8. Backup Locations and Physical Assets

In the event of an interruption, it may be necessary to relocate business processes to a different location. The business continuity plan should include a list of backup locations and contact information for those locations. The plan should also include a list of physical assets, such as computer equipment, that will be needed to continue business processes at the backup location.

9. Periodic Review and Recommendations

The business continuity plan should be reviewed regularly, and changes should be made as needed. The plan should also be reviewed after any major changes to the organization, such as a merger or acquisition. Business continuity professionals can help to review and update the business continuity plan. They can also provide recommendations for improvements to the plan.

10. Technology

Technology is a critical part of business continuity. The business continuity plan should include a plan for maintaining access to critical systems in the event of an interruption. This could include things like data backup, emergency power, and redundant systems. As technology evolves, the business continuity plan should be updated to reflect changes in the organization. Also, employees should be trained on how to use the technology that is critical to business continuity.

How to Create a Business Continuity Plan

The following steps can be taken to get started on a BCP:

  • The risk profile of the organization should be determined.
  • Business processes that are critical to the organization should be identified.
  • A strategy should be developed to keep the organization running in the event of an interruption.
  • Key products, services, or functions should be documented.
  • The business-continuity-plan objectives, scope, and assumptions should be documented.
  • Contact lists should be organized.
  • A business continuity plan should be continuously reviewed and kept up to date.

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Business continuity planning enables you to create an easy-to-use, actionable business continuity planning solution to prepare for the impact of a broad range of threats including natural disasters, disease outbreaks, accidents and terrorism. In addition business continuity planning can help when you face technology-related hazards like the failure of systems, equipment or software. MEP Centers can assist you in developing a plan unique to your needs.

If your company needs to create or tweak a business continuity plan, I highly suggest reaching out to Purdue MEP!

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What Are the 5 Key Components of a Business Continuity Plan?

Business Continuity Plan

Having a business continuity plan isn’t just about getting through tough times – it’s about showing your customers and competitors that you can handle anything. By acting like a safety net, it can give you the confidence to keep pushing your business forward. But how exactly can you create one that can effectively get you through a wide range of  disruptions  that might come your way? Below, we’ll break down the essential elements for a solid business continuity plan to help you bounce back from challenges and grow stronger.

Why You Should Have a Business Continuity Plan

A business continuity plan (BCP) is a strategic document that outlines the standard procedures for enabling important business functions to continue even during disruptive events. By creating a structure for keeping essential processes, services, and systems running, a BCP allows you to have a solid game plan to minimize disruptions and keep your operations on track. Business continuity planning allows you to stay in control during emergencies – effectively guiding your team through responses and allowing you to resume operations quickly. And because it ensures minimal downtime, you can protect your reputation, revenue streams, and customer relationships. Ultimately, a well-crafted BCP helps strengthen your company’s ability to successfully handle situations that are filled with uncertainty.

The Key Components of a Business Continuity Plan

Creating a business continuity plan can be either straightforward or more involved, depending on the size and complexity of your business and the risks you face. For smaller companies, it might be relatively easy, while for bigger ones, it could take more effort. You can either do it in-house or get help from a  service provider . Either way, these are the key components that a typical business continuity plan should cover:

1. Risk and Impact Analysis

When you have a clear picture of potential challenges, you’re better equipped to develop measures for prevention and mitigation. Risk assessment and impact analysis involve identifying different situations that might disrupt your business, estimating how likely they are, and studying the consequences they could have. By understanding the scope of possible disruptions, you can make smart choices when it comes to setting a recovery timeline and prioritizing your efforts. This way, your BCP becomes streamlined and well-organized throughout.

2. Recovery Strategies

Next comes the response plan. It should outline the specific strategies for recovering from your identified disruptions. These strategies should include practical steps to bringing systems back online,  recovering data , resuming production, and other activities that ensure your business returns to normal operations. This part should also detail the timeframe and resources you need. It’s also a good idea to consider alternative approaches, such as backup systems or manual workarounds, if your main strategies don’t work. Having a clear roadmap for recovery makes it much easier to coordinate actions and minimize downtime effectively.

3. Team Assignments

Assigning roles and responsibilities is a crucial aspect of your business continuity plan. Choose specific people or teams who will take charge during disruptions. Clearly define their tasks, decision-making authority, and communication channels. Assignments include incident coordinators, communication liaisons, and recovery team leaders. By having well-defined assignments, you can ensure everyone knows their job. This reduces confusion and makes your response faster and smoother.

4. Communication Guidelines

When disruptive events happen, you need everyone on your team to be on the same page. This is why having effective communication guidelines is a must for creating a solid BCP. You must define how you’ll share information with your team, stakeholders, and the public. Specify who’s in charge of updates, which channels you’ll use, and how often you’ll communicate. Also, include how you’ll handle communication with the media and authorities to keep your message consistent and accurate. These simple guidelines help promote transparency. As a result, you’ll be able to maintain trust with your team, customers, suppliers, and partners.

5. Regular Testing and Training

The business landscape is  always changing , as are the risks and challenges that come with it. With that in mind, your business continuity plan should stay relevant and effective. You can do this by consistently putting your plan through tests and simulations to help you identify gaps and areas for improvement. Of course, it’s also important to train your team on their roles and responsibilities during disruptions. This can help you ensure everyone can execute the plan smoothly when needed.

Business disruptions aren’t just roadblocks; they also provide opportunities for growth. By ensuring your business continuity plan covers all the essential components, you’ll always be ready to turn disruptive events around and use them as stepping stones toward long-term success. To learn more about dealing with risks and threats that can disrupt your business operations,  get a free assessment today .

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What is a Business Continuity Plan (BCP)? Why do we need it?

  • August 11, 2022
  • BPO Insights
  • BPO , Business Process Management

WHAT IS BUSINESS CONTINUITY PLAN (BCP)?

Table of Contents

A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is a protocol for preventing and recovering from potentially significant threats to the company’s business continuity. This article explains what this plan entails, its key benefits, and an easy step-by-step guide on how you can create your own Business Continuity Plan for Business Process Management .

What is a Business Continuity Plan (BCP)? What does a good BCP look like?

Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is an essential tool for keeping your operations running smoothly in the event of a major disaster. They identify processes and procedures that will help you maintain or restore them quickly , whether due to physical disasters (extreme weather) or technological ones such as cyberattacks.

Your business is only as good, fast, and efficient at recovering from unplanned disruptions when you have a plan. A lack of preparedness can lead to delays that will slow down your revenue recovery process, potentially impacting the health of your brand reputation.

WHAT IS BUSINESS CONTINUITY PLAN (BCP)?

Business Continuity Plan is about more than just disaster recovery. A successful program includes preventative measures and procedures for all types of disasters and the ability to continue operating during emergencies without any detrimental effects on productivity or customer service.

A business’s ability to weather difficult times externally impacts its prosperity internally too.

There are three primary aspects to a Business Continuity Plan for key applications and processes:

  • High availability is an essential component for any business. No matter what errors arise, you can be confident that your company has access to its applications and data through robust processes which are well protected against hardware or software failures in all areas – not just those related directly to IT infrastructure.
  • Continuous operations: You can continue your company’s operations in the event of a disruption and during planned outages such as backup and maintenance.
  • Disaster recovery: To avoid a disaster’s consequences, you must have an alternate site in mind. Your options for recovery include moving your entire operations over or restoring them from backups taken beforehand so that they can continue running as usual after any unexpected disruption – a process known appropriately enough as “ disaster prevention .”

What should a Business Continuity Plan include? 5 components of a Business Continuity Plan

Every company needs a plan to ensure that it can continue operating if there is ever an emergency on its end. This way, you’ll never have any customers feel frustrated or abandoned because something out of control happens within the business–and everyone will be safer too. The five critical components:

Risks and potential business impact

The goal of any Business Continuity Plan should be to protect the integrity and longevity of your company’s operations. Impact analyses identify external and internal vulnerabilities that could cause significant harm if they were activated. This way, you can take steps before something goes wrong.

A strong plan will use the output of your business impact analysis not only for risk assessment but also to anticipate the cost and time needed to recover.

Planning an effective response

Once you know what types of risks and threats your business may be vulnerable to, creating a plan to keep them safe is easy.

A comprehensive Business Continuity Plan is crucial to the success of any company. The document should identify which risks are most pressing and develop strategies for addressing them to minimize or prevent damage.

Roles and responsibilities

A Business Continuity Plan will document which key personnel need to be involved in the response . Senior staff members, but this depends on your company and the risk you are dealing with.

When disruption strikes, it’s essential to be prepared. Allowing for the prioritization and allocation of resources can save time in reacting efficiently – which could mean everything when trying to restore service as quickly and smoothly as possible.

Communication

During a business disruption, effective communication is vital. This means speaking with your team members and talking to anybody else who may be interested in what you’re doing – whether they work for the company or not.

The best way to prepare for a crisis is by having an effective Business Continuity Plan . This will ensure that your staff and external contacts are kept up-to-date with what’s happening, so they can continue providing excellent service during any natural or artificial emergency.

Testing and training

WHAT IS BUSINESS CONTINUITY PLAN (BCP)?

Business Continuity Plan must be tested and exercised regularly to work well. This final key component of a successful business continuity plan is “testing,” or exercising your project so it can stay on top form.

By testing and exercising your Business Continuity Plan , you can identify ways to improve it before a disruption occurs. This way, the company can respond quickly when something goes wrong with its plans.

Raising awareness of your company’s Business Continuity Plan is a critical first step in helping to ensure that employees are prepared and able to respond as needed during difficult times. Many companies run regular training sessions on how they can make pivotal decisions under pressure, including learning what steps must be taken should disaster strike.

Why do you need a Business Continuity Plan?

Maintaining business operations during a crisis can help you avoid financial loss and communicate that your company is stable. This will be important for maintaining employee morale and building trust with customers who may have worries about future work from this point on. It’s best if partnerships between all parts of an organization so they know what their roles entail in case something happens.

Building customer confidence is essential. Your customers want to know that you can respond quickly , so they don’t have any concerns about their order being delayed or if something goes wrong with the product when it ships out. Of course, this depends on whether other factors are involved in shipping timeframes.

Brands that can show themselves as strong, consistent, and graceful in the face of adversity will see their consumers as having a deep understanding of what they stand for and how it reflects on them. This is an opportunity to create deeper connections with customers through confident branding that showcases your ability to withstand any storm or challenge head-on without flinching.

Protect your supply chain. Supply disruptions are common because there’s so many ways they could happen! A pandemic can shutter manufacturing facilities, for example – or a natural disaster may paralyze transportation in a critical geographic area (which would effectively cut off points). A good plan will set out already-vetted options for circumventing supply chain issues.

With so many businesses being disrupted at once, your ability to quickly get things back on track will go a long way in showing consumers that you’re one of the few brands they can trust. In times like these, too – when people need help getting their lives back together.

Recover quickly from a business disruption. The key to mitigating financial risk is knowing what you should do in case of an emergency and how long it will take for your company to return up again after any unforeseen incident. The more extended downtime, the more significant potential that money could be lost through unchecked expenses or revenue disruptions which may lead to more severe consequences if left unattended too long without action being taken on their behalf accordingly.

4 Characteristics Guiding Your Continuity Planning

  • Comprehensive: There’s no way to plan for every possibility, but it is worth trying. Don’t assume your first idea will work; you’ll need backup plans and more! Make sure that any factor involved can be accounted for in case things go wrong – because they probably won’t just once (or twice) happen on multiple fronts simultaneously without causing some chaos among all parties concerned.
  • Realistic: When making plans, it is essential to be realistic and think of ways that things can go wrong . Ensure your project has as many contingencies for unforeseeable events , so there are no disasters when they least expect them.
  • Efficient: Making sure your Business Continuity Plan can be executed efficiently and with your resources will make any disaster or disruption easier to handle . The added stress from not having a proper strategy in place could cause problems for even regular tasks, so consider this when creating yours.
  • Adaptable: The best way to prepare for anything is by getting thrown curveballs. Your plan should account for constant monitoring of the situation and provide a good foundation from which you can pivot when necessary, as circumstances change minute-to-minute or even second by second.

How do you start a Business Continuity Plan? 7 steps of continuity management

WHAT IS BUSINESS CONTINUITY PLAN (BCP)?

A Business Continuity Plan can help your company recover quickly and efficiently in an emergency, which is why you need one.

Identify goals

Business Continuity Plan shouldn’t just be for the IT department. It’s essential to all of your critical business functions , including human resources and operations public relations, to keep them running or minimize disruption in case something goes wrong with either side.

You should identify what’s most important to your operations and ensure your risk assessment covers all areas in need. You’ll also do Business Continuity Plan and recovery strategies, so nothing gets left out when disaster strikes.

Establish an emergency team

To make this process more efficient and effective, select a few cross-functional managers or leaders from among those who may bring something valuable . Make sure someone is designated as the leader so they can keep things moving forward while making decisions when necessary.

Perform a risk assessment and business impact analysis (BIA)

The next step in identifying vulnerabilities is researching and analyzing potential threats. You’ll want your team on board with this to determine what would happen if certain services or functions were eliminated, reduced, or modified by removing them from consideration before deciding which option might be best for preserving critical aspects of the business operations.

Identify essential business functions

To ensure that essential services/functions continue during an emergency, you must determine how your organization will maintain them . Here are some of the essential services and functions that you’ll need to have a plan for.

Inventory management and supply continuity: The importance of inventory management cannot be overstated. If you don’t have enough on hand to meet demand, your business could suffer greatly and even fold entirely. This is why all companies must strive for efficient supply chain practices during times when there are disruptions in the market – like disasters or pandemics, which often cause shortages due to their severity.

Order fulfillment and shipping deadlines are crucial. If a crisis hits, can you still fill orders? It may be helpful to diversify the types of providers that offer services for your company because they will likely have different approaches regarding how quickly things get back up on track after either disaster or manufactured causes have triggered an emergency.

Functionality of your eCommerce platform: Can you handle a crisis if something happens, such as an increase in suppliers’ demand for products or services because they become more popular than expected? Would this lead to problems with out-of-stock items on your site, and would it make things difficult when suddenly increased supply due to new production rates coming online?

Customers need transparency and empathy during a crisis. You’ll want to provide your marketing/communications teams with an effective plan for responding so that they can keep the public informed of what’s happening while also communicating effectively through customer support channels when needed. You might consider adding staff members if necessary to answer any questions.

Prepare a plan

Your ecommerce engine runs as a combination of parts, including:

  • Team members
  • Suppliers/ subcontractors

Each of these parts has to have its own plan .

Review and make sure every function has been addressed

Including every aspect of your business in any plan for disruption is essential. Still, it is also true that certain elements will become more critical as you work through the process and make adjustments one step at a time. You’ll want to make sure you’ve documented the following:

  • Level of business risk.
  • Impact on employees and customers, and how you’ll communicate with them.
  • Emergency policy creation.
  • Financial resources can be tapped into in the event of a disaster.
  • External organization or community partners who can work together with you to be mutually beneficial.

Train staff, test, revise, and update the plan

To avoid potential problems, you must present the plan to all your stakeholders and suggest being proactive by performing trial runs. This will allow for a gut check on each part of our strategy before we implement them, which helps ensure everything works as expected ! Once updates are based on this feedback (or if new issues arise), training begins accordingly so everyone can get back up and running quickly after an emergency strikes.

Who is responsible for the Business Continuity Plan?

The business continuity steering committee, program sponsor, and manager are the individuals who should work together in identifying an approach for planning. They’ll determine which plans (crisis management or IT disaster recovery) are, among many other things, then decide on how many teams will be needed to own those specific types of activities/resources within your company’s scope.

Finally, we need people who know what needs to be done when it comes time to recover critical aspects, both externally facing ones such as customer service and internally focused ones, including inventory levels at stores.

What is Risk Assessment in Business Continuity Plan? How do you prepare a continuous Risk Assessment?

WHAT IS BUSINESS CONTINUITY PLAN (BCP)?

To be prepared for any emergency that might strike your business, you need a Risk Assessment . This is essential in creating the perfect continuity plan and ensuring all possible threats are identified before harming operations.

Business Continuity Plan is essential in ensuring that your company can keep running no matter what. Businesses should consider all possibilities for natural disasters like hurricanes and pandemics; manufactured such as cyber attacks-and plan accordingly with time to spare.

5 Steps in the Risk Assessment Process

Identify the hazards

Your organization’s workplace is a reflection of you and your team. It can be challenging to keep up with all aspects of work. Still, accidents/incidents serve as important pointers in determining what hazards could potentially harm an employer if not appropriately handled.

They might be natural disasters like hurricanes or fires or biological ones such as pandemics/foodborne illnesses which result in the loss of life. A workplace accident could also occur with all its risks, including slips from heights; transportation-related incidents caused by accidents while driving cars down busy streets.

Determine who might be harmed and how: Hazard identification is an important first step in Risk Assessment . To be thorough and efficient, you should identify who would come into contact with or become exposed to if the hazard suddenly occurred.

Evaluate the risks and take precautions: To determine the level of risk for each hazard, you need to evaluate how likely it is that a particular threat will occur and what kind or severity of consequences would result from such an event. This helps us decide where we should reduce our risks.

Record your findings: As a business owner, you must ensure that all employees are safe on the job. You can do this by implementing an effective risk assessment process which includes identifying potential hazards and how you plan for them to protect yourself and prevent accidents from happening with others around you.

Review assessment and update: Your workplace is constantly evolving, which means the risks to your business are changing too. New equipment or people may introduce new hazards you didn’t know about before. To protect yourself from these surprises and maintain a reputation, ask for help when necessary by updating Risk Assessment regularly, so they stay updated with current issues.

The following Risk Assessment steps will help you manage potential threats to your brand reputation. By partnering with an experienced specialist, the chances are slim that something could go wrong and unfairly affect business operations.

Thorough preparation is vital for maintaining uninterrupted service when disaster strikes— luckily, it never hurts too much to prepare ahead of time.

Is Business Continuity Plan part of Risk Assessment?

Business Continuity Plan is an integral part of Risk Assessment . The benefits of having a sound Business Continuity Plan in place are immense. From cyberattacks to fires and floods, all organizations will face unforeseen disruptions at some point – but with proper preparation, they can resume their most critical functions more quickly than ever before.

Pairing a Business Continuity Plan with other Risk Assessment techniques is an excellent way to mitigate all potential risks. This plan should be paired for maximum effectiveness and efficiency, such as through disaster recovery planning or by regularly assessing your organization’s strengths. Hence, you know what needs improvement before anything happens.

Businesses need to be prepared for the worst. Being fully aware of your level of risk and what needs to keep business moving is where you want to start. But that alone won’t give a competitive edge or help mitigate any financial risks involved with disasters like major disruptions from external factors.  Creating an entire plan will make everyone in your company feel more at ease; knowing they’re well trained on implementing it too means there’s the peace-of plan if disaster strikes.

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COMMENTS

  1. What are the 5 key components of a business continuity plan?

    5. Testing and training. Business continuity plans are not just theoretical - they need to be robust enough to be put into action. In order to check this, the final key component of a business continuity plan is testing and exercising. Realistic scenarios can be used to test the plan and your team's response.

  2. What does a business continuity plan include? 5 key elements

    1. Build your business continuity plan foundation As you reimagine your entire business resilience program, here's what your BC plans should include. Effective BC plans start with the following five essential framework elements: Objectives: What will the plan cover, and how does it fit into a larger organizational response to disruption?

  3. What Are the 5 Components of a Business Continuity Plan?

    Key components of a business continuity strategy include identifying risks, assigning roles and responsibilities to team members, and establishing a recovery plan. Focusing on business continuity is essential for success because it can yield the following benefits:

  4. What Is a Business Continuity Plan (BCP), and How Does It Work?

    Business impact analysis, recovery, organization, and training are all steps corporations need to follow when creating a Business Continuity Plan. Benefits of a Business Continuity...

  5. 6 Key Components of a Business Continuity Plan (BCP)

    You will need to identify the following: Stakeholders Key personnel Backup site operators Providers (equipment, services) Emergency responders Third-party vendors Facilities managers Incident response team (s) Successors in case key personnel are unavailable or become overwhelmed Additional critical third-party personnel

  6. How to Write a Business Continuity Plan

    There's no one correct way to create a business continuity document, but the critical content it should include are procedures, agreements, and resources.Think of your plan as lists of tasks or processes that people must perform to keep your operation running. Be specific in your directions, and use diagrams and illustrations.

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    A Business Continuity Plan should include: 1. BCP Team In the midst of a disaster or emergency, having a team or point person to go to will be essential. The BCP team will be responsible for planning and testing business continuity strategies.

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    A business continuity plan is a vital document that outlines the steps an organization must take to ensure its critical functions continue to operate during and after an unforeseen disruption. This comprehensive guide will provide a deep dive into the key components of an effective plan, best practices for developing a robust strategy, and the ...

  9. How to create an effective business continuity plan

    A business continuity plan outlines the procedures and instructions that the organization must follow during such an event to minimize downtime, covering business processes, assets, human...

  10. How to Write a Business Continuity Plan

    What are the 5 components of a business continuity plan? While every business continuity plan is unique, five key components are: Risks and their potential business impact and likelihood of occurrence; Mission critical services, processes, and resources; Risk mitigation actions

  11. What Are The 5 Components Of A Business Continuity Plan

    The key components of a business continuity plan include identifying potential threats, developing strategies for recovery, and establishing crisis communication protocols. By identifying potential threats, organizations can proactively plan and mitigate risks to minimize the impact on their operations.

  12. Fundamental Components of a Business Continuity Plan

    The fundamental components of a business continuity plan must include workspace recovery, cyber resilience, change management, and several other elements. Additionally, sharing a business continuity plan with the essential personnel and educating them on how to handle disasters is another vital component. Why?

  13. "5 Vital Components of a Robust Business Continuity Plan

    A robust business continuity plan typically includes the following key components: Risk Assessment Before developing a plan, it is essential to conduct a comprehensive risk assessment to identify potential threats and vulnerabilities that could disrupt your operations.

  14. 7 Elements and Components of a Business Continuity Plan

    What are the Elements of a Business Continuity Plan? Now that you understand the difference between disaster recovery and business continuity, let's take a closer look at some of the key elements of a business continuity plan. 1. A Dependable Business Continuity Team

  15. Business Continuity Planning

    Business Continuity Training Part 3: Planning Process Step 1. The first of six steps addressed in this Business Continuity Training, which detail the process of building a business continuity plan. This step addresses how organizations should "prepare" to create a business continuity plan. View on YouTube.

  16. Components of a Business Continuity Plan

    Although there are many things to consider, two primary business continuity plan components are: 1. Data backup, protection, and recovery 2. Personnel, procedures, and communication These are the main components of a strong business continuity plan. Keep reading to gain a deeper insight into the major aspects of healthy BCP creation and management.

  17. "Top 5 Components of a Business Continuity Plan

    4 mins read time Top 5: Important components of a Business Continuity Plan This Guide details the top five important components that every business continuity plan should include, providing valuable insight and expert advice to ensure effective disaster recovery and risk management strategies for businesses in various industries.

  18. The 10 Components of a Business Continuity Plan

    To have an effective business continuity plan, the following components must be present: 1. Business Impact Analysis. The first step in creating a business continuity plan is to conduct a business impact analysis (BIA). This is a process of identifying and assessing the potential impact of an interruption to critical business operations.

  19. PDF BUSINESS CONTINUITY PLANNING GUIDELINES

    This planning guide is an assembly of existing standard operating procedures, plans and best practises that will explore the key components of a Business Continuity planning process. It will also provide a high-level framework for the creation, implementation, and maintenance of a business Continuity Plan (BCP)..

  20. Business Continuity Planning

    Business continuity planning enables you to create an easy-to-use, actionable business continuity planning solution to prepare for the impact of a broad range of threats including natural disasters, disease outbreaks, accidents and terrorism. In addition business continuity planning can help when you face technology-related hazards like the ...

  21. PDF Crisis management and business continuity guide

    stakeholders and prepare them for further employment of the project plan. Phase 4: Implementation Project Plan Develop a prioritized implementation project plan to achieve the desired target state for Business Continuity. Phase 5: Debrief & Review Hold a debrief session with relevant stakeholders to summarize findings, and provide a

  22. What Are the 5 Key Components of a Business Continuity Plan?

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    Artificial intelligence (AI) can be further leveraged for business continuity, with a 2022 Deloitte survey revealing that 76% of respondents plan to increase investments in AI to gain more ...