Business Continuity Plan

A business continuity plan includes a defined set of planning to ensure that an organization continues to operate its critical business functions despite of a disaster. Plan encompasses identifying an organization’s external and internal threats and then forming a recovery plan keeping in mind hard and soft assets of the company. In other words, it provides a roadmap for your business to continue in case of serious incidents or disasters without interruption or atleast come to an operational state within a relatively short duration.

Steps to create successful business continuity plan

1. Document-Firstly, compile a document that mentions about your organization’s internal key employees and their backup, your critical business functions cannot operate without these people. It is important to consider the most significant job functions to be performed on a daily basis and people who fill these positions. And also get aware about employees who can take care of job functions when primary jobholder is not available.

Make a list of all these individuals containing all contact information including business phone no., other contact no. be it landline or cell no., personal email ID so that they can be reached conveniently in case of an emergency.

2. Telecommuting- Identify those people in the organization, which can telecommute when required. It is important to be acquainted about who all can conduct business from a home office and who cannot. Make sure your critical staff identified in step 1 is capable of telecommuting when essential.

3. List of external contacts- It is important to document a list of all vital external contacts including vendors, contractors, legal advisors, service providers, IT consultants. Mention in list pe...

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...e- Take a short training session including all employees, and make them well acquainted about the BCP plan, so that they are not blank in case of an emergency. Ensure people who are not on the critical list are also included and trained about the same.

10. Testing- After doing so many efforts, it is wise to test the plan once so that you know whether practically you can pull it off or not. You may realize, your plan has some shortcomings and need improvements or changes. And when you are actually in a serious situation, situations can be quite different. So keep updating or revising your plan else it will miserable disappoint in the hour of need.

Most of the companies often neglect making a BCP plan in advance, but to ensure smooth functioning of business operations, a well thought out and prepared plan is required to experience minimum loss and fast recovery.