Need a Business Continuity Plan? Sample Business Continuity Plan!

Operation continuity is an essential part of the business continuity-planning task, but there are other issues that need to be dealt with. These include protection of the company's reputation, market share, brand supply chain and retaining the customers, employees and stockholders.

Operation continuity is an essential part of the business continuity-planning task, but there are other issues that need to be dealt with. These include protection of the company’s reputation, market share, brand supply chain and retaining the customers, employees and stockholders.

Basic Requirements of a Business Continuity Plan:

  1. Design a plan and implement prevention and protection activities for all the risks anticipated in advance.
  2. Plan the activities to be executed during an emergency, including:
    • Evacuation plan
    • Emergency response plan
    • Crisis management and communication plan
    • Contingency or work-around plan
  3. Employ strategic planning, with vital information, resources and documentation of the activities, for resumption, restoration and recovery of the business, both logical and physical.

People outside the planning community are often confused about the disaster recovery plan. On the basis of the widely accepted standards, the disaster recovery plan is designed to recover technology, dates and tools that support data, application and infrastructure. This includes the operating systems, hardware and network. The disaster recovery plan is a part of the business continuity plan and is very important to integrate, to ensure that the business runs smoothly. The adopted plan ensures that the business is safeguarded against any untimely and severe loss, due to unforeseen circumstances.

Planning Process

A business continuity plan is like a protective umbrella for all the activities that are planned and executed before, during and after any event. These include plans for business, technology and human resource. The planning process includes:

  1. Vulnerability assessment
  2. Risk identification and quantification
  3. Risk transfer
  4. Protection and mitigation
  5. Business impact analysis for business interruption impact and individual business unit impact
  6. Plan to mitigate operational and financial risk based impacts
  7. Emergency response for these impacts
  8. Plans to resume, recover, restore the technological infrastructure to support the business

It is important that all the risks with high probability and impact have proper resumption and response plans in place, based on the worst-case scenario. Review your overall business structure thoroughly and try to identify the potentially weak points. Some weak points may be internal, while some may be external. The entire range of “what ifs” should be examined via a business continuity plan. These can be different for every business. There is a need to consider the essentials of every business, including raw material sources, ownership, distribution chains and customer support, accounting and financial reporting.

A number of business owners ignore the importance of business continuity plans and this could prove to be a fatal mistake. Business continuity plans could also be referred to as contingency or disaster plans. The thought of such eventualities may not be pleasant, but it is essential to have a business contingency plan in place, to safeguard your hard-earned money and ensure a well-established business.

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