BCP IS NOTHING BUT PLANNING EVERYTHING!

What Is Business Continuity Planning (BCP)? 

Business continuity planning (BCP) is the process involved in creating a system of prevention and recovery from potential threats to a company. The plan ensures that personnel and assets are protected and can function quickly in the event of a disaster. The BCP is generally conceived in advance and involves input from key stakeholders and personnel.

BCP involves defining any and all risks that can affect a 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 the 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 as it covers only a fragments of costs and the customers who move to the competition.

Business continuity planning (BCP) is the process a company undergoes to create a prevention and recovery system from 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, and that they can be identified and corrected.

Understanding Business Continuity Planning (BCP)

A business continuity plan (BCP) is a plan to help ensure that business processes can continue during a time of emergency or disaster. Such emergencies or disasters might include a fire or any other case where business is not able to occur under normal conditions. Businesses need to look at all such potential threats and devise BCPs to ensure continued operations so the threats don’t become a reality.

A business continuity plan involves;

Analysis of organizational threats

A list of the primary tasks required to keep the organizational operations flowing

Easily located management contact information

Explanation of where personnel should go in case of a disaster, if

Information on data backups and organization site backup

Collaboration among all facets of the organization

Buy-in from everyone in the organization

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.

Developing a Business Continuity Plan

There are several steps 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. 
• Recovery: In this, 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 identified and corrected.

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’ financial and operational functions. The point at which they must be recovered is generally known as the “recovery time objective.”

Business continuity plans are pre-drafted, pre-determined protocols for how your organization will overcome a business disruption caused by an emergency.

Containing a serialized checklist of risk-mitigating actions to take, business continuity planning addresses both natural and human disasters that can strike, ultimately bringing operations to a halt. Such disaster scenarios include:

• Weather incidents, such as floods, hurricanes and tornadoes
• On-premise accidents
• Technological outages
• Breaches and cybersecurity events
• Supply chain disruptions
• Any other significant system, process or operational failure that stalls core functions and grinds “business as usual” to a halt

The goal of a BCP is to mitigate the damage and reinstate operations before any of the above scenarios become existential business threats. Even small-seeming events like a severe storm damaging physical building infrastructure can trigger consequences affecting other core business domains. For example, consider the effects of a tornado that destroys the only third-party warehousing service you use to store your inventory, or a ransomware attack holding hostage your customers’ payment and account information.