examples of business continuity plan

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Blog Business 7 Business Continuity Plan Examples

7 Business Continuity Plan Examples

Written by: Danesh Ramuthi Nov 28, 2023

A business continuity plan (BCP) is a strategic framework that prepares businesses to maintain or swiftly resume their critical functions in the face of disruptions, whether they stem from natural disasters, technological failures, human error, or other unforeseen events.

In today’s fast-paced world, businesses face an array of potential disruptions ranging from cyberattacks and ransomware to severe weather events and global pandemics. By having a well-crafted BCP, businesses can mitigate these risks, ensuring the safety and continuity of their critical services and operations. To further safeguard their operations, integrating measures to protect against ransomware into their BCP is a natural and essential step.

Responsibility for business continuity planning typically lies with top management and dedicated planning teams within an organization. It is a cross-functional effort that involves input and coordination across various departments, ensuring that all aspects of the business are considered.

For businesses looking to develop or refine their business continuity strategies, there are numerous resources available. Tools like Venngage’s business plan maker and their business continuity plan templates offer practical assistance, streamlining the process of creating a robust and effective BCP. 

Click to jump ahead: 

7 business continuity plan examples

Business continuity types, how to write a business continuity plan, how often should a business continuity plan be reviewed, business continuity plan vs. disaster recovery plan, final thoughts.

In business, unpredictability is the only certainty. This is where business continuity plans (BCPs) come into play. These plans are not just documents; they are a testament to a company’s preparedness and commitment to sustained operations under adverse conditions. To illustrate the practicality and necessity of these plans, let’s delve into some compelling examples.

Business continuity plan example for small business

Imagine a small business specializing in digital marketing services, with a significant portion of its operations reliant on continuous internet connectivity and digital communication tools. This business, although small, caters to a global clientele, making its online presence and prompt service delivery crucial.

Scope and objective:

This Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is designed to ensure the continuity of digital marketing services and client communications in the event of an unforeseen and prolonged internet outage. Such an outage could be caused by a variety of factors, including cyberattacks, technical failures or service provider issues. The plan aims to minimize disruption to these critical services, ensuring that client projects are delivered on time and communication lines remain open and effective.

Operations at risk:

Operation: Digital Marketing Services Operation Description: A team dedicated to creating and managing digital marketing campaigns for clients across various time zones. Business Impact: High Impact Description: The team manages all client communications, campaign designs, and real-time online marketing strategies. An internet outage would halt all ongoing campaigns and client communications, leading to potential loss of business and client trust.

Recovery strategy:

The BCP should include immediate measures like switching to a backup internet service provider or using mobile data as a temporary solution. The IT team should be prepared to deploy these alternatives swiftly.

Immediate measures within the BCP should encompass alternatives like switching to a backup internet service provider or utilizing mobile data, supplemented by tools such as backup and recovery systems, cloud-based disaster recovery solutions, and residential proxies , while the IT team should be prepared to deploy these swiftly. 

Additionally, the company should have a protocol for informing clients about the situation via alternative communication channels like mobile phones.

Roles and responsibilities:

Representative: Alex Martinez Role: IT Manager Description of Responsibilities:

• Oversee the implementation of the backup internet connectivity plan.
• Coordinate with the digital marketing team to ensure minimal disruption in campaign management.
• Communicate with the service provider for updates and resolution timelines.

Business continuity plan example for software company

In the landscape of software development, a well-structured Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is vital. This example illustrates a BCP for a software company, focusing on a different kind of disruption: a critical data breach.

Scope and objectives:

This BCP is designed to ensure the continuity of software development and client data security in the event of a significant data breach. Such a breach could be due to cyberattacks, internal security lapses, or third-party service vulnerabilities. The plan prioritizes the rapid response to secure data, assess the impact on software development projects and maintain client trust and communication.

Operation: Software Development and Data Security Operation Description: The software development team is responsible for creating and maintaining software products, which involves handling sensitive client data. In the realm of software development, where the creation and maintenance of products involve handling sensitive client data, prioritizing security is crucial. Strengthen your software development team’s capabilities by incorporating the best antivirus with VPN features, offering a robust defense to protect client information and maintain a secure operational environment. The integrity and security of this data are paramount.

Business Impact: Critical Impact Description: A data breach could compromise client data, leading to loss of trust, legal consequences and potential financial penalties. It could also disrupt ongoing development projects and delay product releases.

The IT security team should immediately isolate the breached systems to prevent further data loss, leveraging data loss prevention tools to further enhance protection. They should then work on identifying the breach’s source and extent to assess the effectiveness of their existing security controls validations and identify any gaps or weaknesses that need to be addressed

Simultaneously, the client relations team should inform affected clients about the breach and the steps being taken. The company should also engage a third-party cybersecurity or pentest firm for an independent investigation and recovery assistance.

Remember, to ensure the IT security team is equipped to handle such situations effectively, it’s imperative to invest in their training. Resources like CCNA Certification Dumps provide valuable training materials to enhance the team’s knowledge in cybersecurity protocols and practices.

Representative: Sarah Lopez Role: Head of IT Security Contact Details: [email protected] Description of Responsibilities:

• Lead the initial response to the data breach, including system isolation and assessment.
• Coordinate with external cybersecurity experts for breach analysis and mitigation.
• Work with the legal team to understand and comply with data breach notification laws.
• Communicate with the software development team leaders about the impact on ongoing projects.

Related: 7 Best Business Plan Software for 2023

Business continuity plan example for manufacturing

In the manufacturing sector, disruptions can significantly impact production lines, supply chains, and customer commitments. This example of a Business Continuity Plan (BCP) for a manufacturing company addresses a specific scenario: a major supply chain disruption.

This BCP is formulated to ensure the continuity of manufacturing operations in the event of a significant supply chain disruption. Such disruptions could be caused by geopolitical events, natural disasters affecting key suppliers or transportation network failures. The plan focuses on maintaining production capabilities and fulfilling customer orders by managing and mitigating supply chain risks.

Operation: Production Line Operation Description: The production line is dependent on a steady supply of raw materials and components from various suppliers to manufacture products. Business Impact: High Impact Description: A disruption in the supply chain can lead to a halt in production, resulting in delayed order fulfillment, loss of revenue and potential damage to customer relationships.

The company should establish relationships with alternative suppliers to ensure a diversified supply chain. In the event of a disruption, the procurement team should be able to quickly switch to these alternative sources. Additionally, maintaining a strategic reserve of critical materials can buffer short-term disruptions. The logistics team should also develop flexible transportation plans to adapt to changing scenarios.

Representative: Michael Johnson Role: Head of Supply Chain Management Contact Details: [email protected] Description of Responsibilities:

• Monitor global supply chain trends and identify potential risks.
• Develop and maintain relationships with alternative suppliers.
• Coordinate with logistics to ensure flexible transportation solutions.
• Communicate with production managers about supply chain status and potential impacts on production schedules.

Related: 15+ Business Plan Templates for Strategic Planning

BCPs are essential for ensuring that a business can continue operating during crises. Here’s a summary of the different types of business continuity plans that are common:

• Operational : Involves ensuring that critical systems and processes continue functioning without disruption. It’s vital to have a plan to minimize revenue loss in case of disruptions.
• Technological : For businesses heavily reliant on technology, this type of continuity plan focuses on maintaining and securing internal systems, like having offline storage for important documents.
• Economic continuity : This type ensures that the business remains profitable during disruptions. It involves future-proofing the organization against scenarios that could negatively impact the bottom line.
• Workforce continuity : Focuses on maintaining adequate and appropriate staffing levels, especially during crises, ensuring that the workforce is capable of handling incoming work.
• Safety : Beyond staffing, safety continuity involves creating a comfortable and secure work environment where employees feel supported, especially during crises.
• Environmental : It addresses the ability of the team to operate effectively and safely in their physical work environment, considering threats to physical office spaces and planning accordingly.
• Security : Means prioritizing the safety and security of employees and business assets, planning for potential security breaches and safeguarding important business information.
• Reputation : Focuses on maintaining customer satisfaction and a good reputation, monitoring conversations about the brand and having action plans for reputation management .

As I have explained so far, a Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is invaluable. Writing an effective BCP involves a series of strategic steps, each crucial to ensuring that your business can withstand and recover from unexpected events. Here’s a guide on how to craft a robust business continuity plan:

1. Choose your business continuity team

Assemble a dedicated team responsible for the development and implementation of the BCP. The team should include members from various departments with a deep understanding of the business operations.

2. Outline your plan objectives

Clearly articulate what the plan aims to achieve. Objectives may include minimizing financial loss, ensuring the safety of employees, maintaining critical business operations, and protecting the company’s reputation.

3. Meet with key players in your departments

Engage with department heads and key personnel to gain insights into the specific needs and processes of each department. This helps in identifying critical functions and resources.

4. Identify critical functions and types of threats

Determine which functions are vital to the business’s survival and identify potential threats that could impact these areas. 

5. Carry on risk assessments across different areas

Evaluate the likelihood and impact of identified threats on each critical function. This assessment helps in prioritizing the risks and planning accordingly.

6. Conduct a business impact analysis (BIA)

Perform a BIA to understand the potential consequences of disruption to critical business functions. It has to be done in determining the maximum acceptable downtime and the resources needed for business continuity.

7. Start drafting the plan

Compile the information gathered into a structured document. The plan should include emergency contact information, recovery strategies and detailed action steps for different scenarios.

8. Test the plan for any gaps

Conduct simulations or tabletop exercises to test the plan’s effectiveness. This testing can reveal unforeseen gaps or weaknesses in the plan.

9. Review & revise your plan

Use the insights gained from testing to refine and update the plan. Continual revision ensures the plan remains relevant and effective in the face of changing business conditions and emerging threats.

Read Also: How to Write a Business Plan Outline [Examples + Templates]

A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) should ideally be reviewed and updated at least annually. 

The annual review ensures that the plan remains relevant and effective in the face of new challenges and changes within the business, such as shifts in business strategy, introduction of new technology or changes in operational processes. 

Additionally, it’s crucial to reassess the BCP following any significant business changes, such as mergers, acquisitions or entry into new markets, as well as after the occurrence of any major incident that tested the plan’s effectiveness. 

However, in rapidly changing industries or in businesses that face a high degree of uncertainty or frequent changes, more frequent reviews – such as bi-annually or quarterly – may be necessary. 

A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) and a Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) are two crucial components of organizational preparedness, yet they serve different functions. The BCP is aimed at preventing interruptions to business operations and maintaining regular activities. 

It focuses on aspects such as the location of operations during a crisis (like a temporary office or remote work), how staff will communicate and which functions are prioritized. In essence, a BCP details how a business can continue operating during and after a disruption​​​​.

On the other hand, a DRP is more specific to restoring data access and IT infrastructure after a disaster. It describes the steps that employees must follow during and after a disaster to ensure minimal function necessary for the organization to continue. 

Essentially, while a BCP is about maintaining operations, a DRP is about restoring critical functions, particularly IT-related, after a disruption has occurred​

It’s clear that having a robust and adaptable business continuity plan (BCP) is not just a strategic advantage but a fundamental necessity for businesses of all sizes and sectors. 

From small businesses to large corporations, the principles of effective business continuity planning remain consistent: identify potential threats, assess the impact on critical functions, and develop a comprehensive strategy to maintain operations during and after a disruption.

The process of writing a BCP, as detailed in this article, underscores the importance of a thorough and thoughtful approach. It’s about more than just drafting a document; it’s about creating a living framework that evolves with your business and the changing landscape of risks.

To assist in this crucial task, you can use Venngage’s business plan maker & their business continuity plan templates . These tools streamline the process of creating a BCP, ensuring that it is not only comprehensive but also clear, accessible and easy to implement. 

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What Is A Business Continuity Plan? [+ Template & Examples]

Published: December 30, 2022

When a business crisis occurs, the last thing you want to do is panic.

The second-to-last thing you want to do is be unprepared. Crises typically arise without warning. While you shouldn't start every day expecting the worst, you should be relatively prepared for anything to happen.

A business crisis can cost your company a lot of money and ruin your reputation if you don't have a business continuity plan in place. Customers aren't very forgiving, especially when a crisis is influenced by accidents within the company or other preventable mistakes. If you want your company to be able to maintain its business continuity in the face of a crisis, then you'll need to come up with this type of plan to uphold its essential functions.

In this post, we'll explain what a business continuity plan is, give examples of scenarios that would require a business continuity plan, and provide a template that you can use to create a well-rounded program for your business.

Table of Contents:

What is a business continuity plan?

• Business Continuity Types
• Business Continuity vs Disaster Recovery

Business Continuity Plan Template

How to write a business continuity plan.

• Business Continuity Examples

A business continuity plan outlines directions and procedures that your company will follow when faced with a crisis. These plans include business procedures, names of assets and partners, human resource functions, and other helpful information that can help maintain your brand's relationships with relevant stakeholders. The goal of a business continuity plan is to handle anything from minor disruptions to full-blown threats.

For example, one crisis that your business may have to respond to is a severe snowstorm. Your team may be wondering, "If a snowstorm disrupted our supply chain, how would we resume business?" Planning contingencies ahead of time for situations like these can help your business stay afloat when you're faced with an unavoidable crisis.

When you think about business continuity in terms of the essential functions your business requires to operate, you can begin to mitigate and plan for specific risks within those functions.

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Business continuity planning is the process of creating a plan to address a crisis. When writing out a business continuity plan, it's important to consider the variety of crises that could potentially affect the company and prepare a resolution for each.

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9 Professional Business Continuity Plan (BCP) Templates

Written by: Idorenyin Uko

Crises are inevitable in business—be it natural disasters, pandemics, human error, system failures or other unforeseen events. PwC's 2023 Global Crisis and Resilience Survey revealed that 96% of business leaders encountered disruption in the past two years and 76% stated that the impact on operations was medium to high.

As a business leader who wants to stay ahead of the game, resilience should be a top priority. You don’t want to get caught off guard during disruptions—you could lose thousands of dollars or your reputation could take a hit. That’s why it's super important to create a business continuity plan that helps you proactively anticipate and respond to crises.

A well-crafted business continuity plan (BCP) template is your organization's roadmap for surviving unexpected disruptions. It outlines the steps necessary to keep your business operational during and after a crisis.

In this article, we’ll provide nine professional business continuity plan templates to get you started and cover how to create an effective business continuity plan.

Table of Contents

What is a business continuity plan, what should a business continuity plan include, types of business continuity, how to write a business continuity plan, business continuity plan faqs.

• A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is a document that outlines the procedures an organization must follow during a disaster or other significant event that may disrupt business operations.
• A disaster recovery plan aims to restore IT infrastructure, systems and operations after a crisis. In contrast, a business continuity plan is designed to ensure that essential business functions are available during and after a crisis, including personnel, facilities, processes and technology.
• There are different types of business continuity, such as operational, technology, economic, workforce, safety, environmental, security, reputation management and regulatory and compliance continuity.
• Follow these business continuity planning steps to prepare for uncertainties: assemble a team, define your goals and scope, engage key personnel in different departments, identify critical business functions and threats, analyze the impact of each threat and conduct a business impact analysis.
• Visme provides a wide range of professionally designed templates, AI tools, an online whiteboard, analytics and advanced features for efficient business continuity planning. Create a team account to collaborate with stakeholders, brainstorm and create a plan that is robust and easy to implement and update.

A business continuity plan (BCP) is a playbook that explains the procedures your company must follow to maintain or resume operations in the event of a risk or crisis. These risks may include cyberattacks, civic unrest, human errors, pandemics, natural disasters or other threats.

This plan covers your essential business processes, human resources, assets, business partners and more. It also specifies the systems and processes that need to be sustained and describes how to maintain them to minimize downtime during unplanned events.

With a solid BCP plan, your team can quickly respond to risks and crises, reduce downtime, maintain customer confidence and protect your brand reputation. It also helps your company continue to meet its obligations to customers, suppliers and other stakeholders.

Business Continuity Plan vs. Disaster Recovery Plan

A business continuity plan and a disaster recovery plan are both essential components of any company's risk management strategy. Together, they are considered business continuity disaster recovery (BCDR).

However, they are not the same!

A disaster recovery plan focuses on restoring IT infrastructure, systems and operations after a crisis, while a business continuity plan covers all aspects of business operations, including personnel, facilities, processes and technology.

That said, a disaster recovery plan is a crucial element for maintaining business continuity. And the action items in your organization's disaster recovery plan should be informed by the business continuity plan.

If you want your business continuity plan to be effective, remember to incorporate these key components.

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• Business Impact Analysis (BIA): This section should pinpoint the critical business functions—the essential processes and activities that keep your business running. You should also determine business processes that can be interrupted without major consequences.
• Risk Assessment or Threat Analysis: In this section, identify potential threats or risks that could disrupt these essential processes. These could include natural disasters (floods, fires, etc), cyberattacks, power outages or a global pandemic. Then, prioritize these threats based on their likelihood of occurring and the potential severity of their impact.
• Continuity Strategies and Procedures: Develop detailed plans for recovering critical business functions after a disruption. This may include communication protocols, data backup and recovery procedures, alternative work arrangements, evacuation plans, emergency contacts, etc. Be sure to address all aspects of business continuity, including people, processes, facilities and technology.
• Business Continuity Testing and Maintenance: Your plan should include regular testing and maintenance of your business continuity strategy. Business continuity exercises—like simulations and drills—are great for spotting weaknesses and making sure your strategy is effective and reliable. Conduct these exercises regularly and update the plan periodically based on what you’ve learned from them or to reflect changes in your business, technology and the threat landscape.
• Crisis Management/Recovery Team: In your plan, assemble a recovery team responsible for implementing the BCP during a crisis. Outline the roles and responsibilities of each team member, along with the training and resources required to handle crisis situations. The team should have regular meetings to go over the business continuity plan and identify any adjustments to be made.
• Employee Training and Awareness: It is essential that all members of the business recovery team receive training so they know what to do before, during and after an emergency. Your plan should highlight the type of training they need, the resources needed to implement it and how to assess its effectiveness.
• Crisis Communication Plan: Establish internal and external communication protocols during a crisis. Outline who will be responsible for communicating with employees, customers, vendors, suppliers and other stakeholders. Also, describe how information will be disseminated—text, email, social media, phone call, etc.
• Backup or Alternative Work Locations: The business continuity plan should include a list of alternate locations where operations can continue if primary facilities are inaccessible and the details of those locations. Don't forget to list any physical assets, like computers needed at the backup location to keep things running smoothly.
• Technology : Explain how you’ll maintain access to critical systems like emergency power, data backup and redundant systems in your plan.
• Continuous Monitoring and Review: Establish a process for monitoring and reviewing the effectiveness of the BCP on an ongoing basis. This includes updating the plan to reflect changes in the business environment, technology or regulatory requirements.
• Documentation and Documentation Management: Maintain detailed documentation of the BCP, including policies, procedures and contact information. Ensure that this documentation is readily accessible to key personnel and regularly updated as needed.
• Operational Continuity: This type of continuity plan focuses on ensuring services, processes and infrastructure required for operations continue to function during and after a disruption. Operational continuity helps minimize downtime and financial losses.
• Technology Continuity: For companies that heavily depend on technology, this continuity plan keeps their IT systems and data (networks, servers, databases and applications) up and running and secure. IT continuity plans typically include strategies for data backup, system redundancy and recovery procedures.
• Economic Continuity: This continuity plan guarantees that your business will remain financially stable, liquid and profitable in times of disruption. It involves taking steps to ensure the organization is prepared to withstand potential scenarios that may negatively impact your bottom line such as accessing emergency funds, managing cash flow and securing lines of credit.
• Workforce Continuity: This plan involves having enough employees with the right skills and knowledge to handle the workload, especially during times of crisis. Workforce continuity plans may include company succession planning , cross-training employees, implementing remote work options or leveraging technology to automate specific tasks.
• Safety Continuity: Safety continuity addresses the well-being and safety of employees during a disruption. This involves guaranteeing their safety, providing support services, creating a comfortable work environment and ensuring employees have the tools they need to succeed.
• Environmental Continuity: This type of BCP ensures your team can operate effectively and safely in their work environment. Environmental continuity may include identifying potential threats to your physical office or headquarters and developing response strategies to protect against natural disasters, fires or other hazards that could disrupt operations.
• Security Continuity: Security resilience is about maintaining the safety and security of employees, critical assets and information during disruptions, natural disasters, cyber-attacks, etc. Security continuity strategies include implementing redundant security measures, creating backup systems, identity and access management, securing endpoint devices, regular security awareness training and developing incident response plans.
• Reputation Management: This plan focuses on protecting and preserving the organization's reputation and brand image during and after a crisis. Reputation management plans include strategies for managing public perception, addressing negative publicity and rebuilding stakeholder trust.
• Regulatory and Compliance Continuity: This business continuity plan addresses compliance with regulatory requirements and industry standards during and after a disruption. These may include strategies for ensuring ongoing compliance, maintaining documentation and addressing any regulatory issues that may arise.

9 Business Continuity Plan Templates

Here are nine business continuity templates you can customize to fit your branding and business planning needs.

1. General Business Continuity Plan

This lilac-themed business continuity plan is the perfect tool to prepare your company for risks or unplanned disruptions. It has dedicated sections for key contacts, communication guidelines, threat analysis, recovery phases and training and awareness.

By filling out these sections, stakeholders have a set of guidelines and procedures to follow during emergencies. You can adapt it to suit your company’s risk management strategy—no matter your business size or niche.

Each page of this plan is decorated with stunning visuals and graphics that drive visual appeal and hook your audience until the end. This template is customizable—you can edit content, change images, apply custom colors and add or remove pages.

Invite stakeholders to view, comment on or edit this plan in real time or asynchronously with Visme’s collaboration tool . Team members can also leave feedback, reply to or resolve comments.

Use the workflow tool to assign roles or different sections of the plan for team members to work on and manage progress, deadlines and corrections—all in one place.

 2. Business Continuity Plan Flow Chart

Unlike our previous example, this template is packed with stunning visuals, flowcharts and tables that illustrate your business continuity plan.

This business continuity plan example outlines the different stages of managing hard failure, from impact analysis to risk assessment and preventive measures. You’ll also find information on critical functions and key contacts and resources.

Notice how the first flowchart illustrates the link between different business functions and their threat types. There's also a table that lists the threat type, likelihood and impact. With Visme, you can easily visualize any business process with flowcharts , diagrams , charts , graphs , maps and other data visualization tools .

From a design perspective, this template is incredible. The visual hierarchy is top-notch and beautifully executed. The white text on a dark background creates a striking visual contrast that grabs readers’ attention and guides their eyes to the most important information.

3. Construction Business Continuity Plan

If you run a construction firm, this business continuity plan has everything you need to enhance your company’s resilience. It outlines all the procedures for responding to different scenarios, ensuring your company can continue operations even during adverse conditions.

This template isn’t set in stone. With our intuitive editor, you can easily adapt it to similar industries, such as architecture, engineering, project management, manufacturing, real estate development and more. This plan accounts for the project transition protocol, stakeholder communication plan, project review status, team support and training and contingency measures to be taken during a crisis.

The fusion of geometric shapes and a contemporary design layout will give your document a dynamic flair. Moreover, the black, white and red color blend creates a visually striking aesthetic.

4. Business Continuity Plan Framework

Use this business continuity framework to protect your company’s reputation. It demonstrates you have taken proactive steps to ensure operational continuity in the event of a disaster. You can replicate it to address other business continuity types such as technology, workforce, security or safety.

This template features key sections of your BCP framework: introduction and conclusions, key contacts, incident response, resource allocation, review and improvement.

The contemporary design grabs attention with its sleek layout and excellent typography, setting the stage for a fantastic reading experience.

But it's not just about aesthetics. The use of stunning images and visual assets helps illustrate the plan's critical components. Visme has an extensive library of graphics and visual assets, such as 2D and 3D icons , shapes, lines, 3D characters, stock photos and videos to make your BCP engaging and easy to understand.

5. SaaS One Pager Business Continuity Plan

Prepare for any emergencies or disruptions, such as application downtime, in your company's operations with this stunning BCP framework. This template—designed with SaaS, tech or e-commerce companies in mind—is here to help you plan for the worst and ensure your business stays up and running.

Not only does it mark the threat level as high, but it visualizes each phase of your BCP, objectives and action plan for each phase in a table format.

With its user-friendly business continuity plan checklist, you can easily prioritize operations and responses, identify critical recovery phases and create a complete restoration plan.

Do you have a draft of your plan in a Google Sheet or Microsoft Excel? Rather than filling out your table manually, you can copy and paste data into your project. You also have the option to embed your table or connect it to live data . Feel free to change the table theme or design, edit headers and cells and more.

6. Cybersecurity Business Continuity Plan

Use this cyber security business continuity plan to minimize the impact of cyber attacks or other security breaches. It ensures critical business operations can continue in the face of a security incident. With a subtle mix of white and accent colors, this template creates a minimalist look that draws the reader’s eye to your message without distractions.

The document starts with an intro that explains what the BCP is about. It further outlines roles and contact details for key personnel as well as internal and external communication guidelines.

Next up is the threat analysis and risk management plan and contracts for suppliers and partners. The final part of this IT continuity plan explains the recovery phases, procedures for responding to cybersecurity incidents and a training and awareness plan.

Remember to customize this plan to align your company’s branding with Visme’s Brand Design Tool . This sends a message that continuity planning is an integral part of your company's values and operations, rather than just a generic set of procedures.

To do this, just input your website URL; the wizard will pull in brand assets and save them in your brand kit . That way, you don’t have to manually add them every time you create a design. The best part is that you’ll have beautiful, branded templates crafted specifically for you.

7. Healthcare One Page Business Continuity Plan

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Disruptions in healthcare operations can have severe consequences not just for your patients but also to your reputation. Even during a crisis, you can’t compromise on the availability of medical supplies, equipment and critical personnel.

This business continuity plan is the key to ensuring you aren’t caught off guard. It prepares you for events such as natural disasters, cyber-attacks or disease outbreaks while minimizing the disruption to patient care.

This one-page business continuity plan analyzes the impact of each natural disaster, along with an immediate recovery strategy and long-term plan—all in a tabular format. With this detailed plan, you can keep critical systems and processes operational and continue to provide essential care and services during and after a crisis or disaster.

Keep stakeholders engaged and enhance their experience with animation and interactive elements like links, popups, hover effects, animated icons, illustrations and special effects. For example, you can link your one-pager to a website or document that contains detailed information about the plan.

8. Nonprofit Business Continuity Plan

Nonprofits need a continuity plan to continue serving their communities even in the face of adversity. This business continuity plan is designed to minimize the impact of unexpected events so your organization can continue operations and fulfill its mission.

This business continuity gap analysis template thoroughly details the organization’s financial status, cost reduction strategies, fundraising opportunities and grants, communication and transparency with stakeholders and continuous review and revisions of the plan.

If you need help tailoring the content to your project, take advantage of Visme’s AI Writer . Input a detailed prompt and watch the tool generate high-quality drafts, proofread your existing text or modify the tone to appeal to your audience.

9. Roles and Responsibilities Business Continuity Plan

This business continuity plan for leadership change is crucial for succession planning . With this template, your organization can continue operations smoothly, even during a transition period.

In this template, you will find the details for key contacts, a transition planning strategy, service delivery continuity and financial stability. Use it as a reference to guide and prepare for unexpected events that could impact leadership or key roles, such as sudden illness or other unforeseen circumstances.

This BCP design template is a stunning work of art. From the color scheme to the layout, every element is crafted to evoke emotions. Each page has beautiful visuals that strike the perfect balance between professionalism and aesthetic appeal.

Download the report in PDF or image format and share it offline with stakeholders. Alternatively, generate a shareable online URL or HTML code to embed it on your landing page or website.

Monitor how your readers engage with your plan using Visme Analytics . Gain insight into metrics, such as views, unique visits, average time and average completion.

A well-crafted business continuity plan (BCP) is your organization's roadmap for surviving unexpected disruptions— big or small.

However, business continuity management is not just about putting together a checklist of actions.

To truly prepare for the unexpected, you must approach BCP development with a proactive, strategic and intentional mindset.

In this section, we’ll break down the steps involved in writing an effective business continuity plan.

1. Assemble a Business Continuity Team

Start by forming a dedicated team responsible for developing, implementing and maintaining your business continuity plan.

Your team should work together to identify potential risks, develop plans for mitigating those risks, test them and be ready to implement them in the event of a crisis. It's important to ensure that the team is diverse, well-trained and has the resources to manage a crisis effectively.

This team should include representatives from various departments across your organization, such as IT, operations, human resources, finance, communications and legal. It’s advisable to have a high-level executive, such as a CEO, COO or CFO, who will not only provide leadership and support but also act as a link between company executives and the rest of the team.

Appoint a dedicated BCP coordinator or manager who will serve as the primary point of contact for the BCP team and coordinate activities across departments. You’ll also need a communications expert to handle information sharing related to the plan. Depending on your company size, you may need to bring in risk management experts, external consultants or advisors.

2. Define the Goals and Scope of the Business Continuity Plan

A well-defined Business Continuity Plan (BCP) should spell out what you aim to achieve, what your plan will cover and specific benchmarks for success.

For example, your goal(s) could be to minimize downtime for critical business functions, protect essential data and IT infrastructure from loss or damage, ensure the safety and well-being of employees during a crisis and minimize financial losses caused by disruptions.

Your scope should discuss the breadth and limitations of your plan. What type of disruption does it cover—natural disasters, cyberattacks, power outages? Which business functions are included—IT, finance or customer service? What level of detail will be provided—a high-level overview or step-by-step procedures?

Defining your goals and scope provides clear direction for the recovery team and ensures that your BCP aligns with the overall business objectives.

3. Engage Key Personnel in Different Departments

For your BCP to work, all different departments in your organization need to get involved and work together. This ensures all aspects of the business are considered and potential risks or vulnerabilities are properly addressed.

Start by mapping your critical business functions and identifying the departments that support them. Within each department, pinpoint key personnel who play a crucial role in those functions.

Then, hold brainstorming sessions with these key personnel using Visme’s online whiteboard . The goal is to learn about their key processes, the systems and applications that support your operations, the potential threats they might face, and to develop recovery strategies relevant to that department. This collaborative approach ensures that resources are allocated to the most critical areas.

4. Identify Critical Business Functions and Threats

After gathering insights from brainstorming or interview sessions, develop a list of your organization's critical functions, processes and activities. These functions will vary depending on the industry, size and nature of the organization.

Once you’ve identified critical business functions, carefully assess and analyze the potential threats that could impact them. Threats can come from various sources, such as natural disasters, cyber-attacks, supply chain disruptions, financial crises,  human errors and even more specific threats like losing a key supplier.

5. Analyze the Impact of Each Threat

Next, evaluate how each threat could disrupt your operations, considering factors like data loss, physical damage or employee displacement.

Evaluate the probability that each risk could occur by reviewing historical data, industry reports and expert opinions. Then, evaluate the potential impact of each risk on business operations.

When assessing the financial, operational and reputational impact of each risk, you may want to consider these questions:

• What is the potential impact on the company's reputation and brand image?
• How much revenue will be lost during the downtime?
• What are the potential costs of mitigating the risk?
• How would the risk affect the company's operations, such as production or delivery?
• How many stakeholders, suppliers or customers will lose confidence in the company?

Prioritize threats based on their likelihood of occurring and potential severity of impact. This activity will help you prioritize the most critical areas and develop appropriate mitigation strategies.

6. Conduct a Business Impact Analysis (BIA)

The BIA analysis helps you determine the maximum tolerable downtime (RTO) and acceptable amount of data loss (RPO) for each function. It analyzes the critical business functions within your organization, the major resources they utilize, their operational dependencies and the average time required for each function.

Recovery Time Objective (RTO) refers to the maximum amount of time that a system, network or application can be down after a disruption or failure before the resulting impact becomes unacceptable.

The Recovery Point Objective (RPO) is the maximum amount of data loss an organization can withstand in the event of a disaster or system failure.

Every organization has a unique Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO). It all depends on the nature of its business, the industry it operates in, any regulatory requirements it needs to comply with and other operational factors.

What's more, different parts of a business can even have different RTOs and RPOs, which is why executives need to set them up based on their specific needs. This analysis helps prioritize your recovery efforts based on what's essential to keep your business running.

7. Develop Recovery Strategies for Each Risk

For each identified threat, develop detailed recovery strategies to ensure critical business functions can resume as quickly as possible.

For example, this might involve workforce redundancy plans, data backup and recovery procedures, alternative communication channels and plans for relocating operations to a backup site if necessary.

8. Document the Plan

Now that you have all the information you need for your business continuity plan (BCP), the next step is to draft it in a user-friendly format. That’s the beauty of pre-made templates—they can help you save time and effort.

Our templates are designed by professionals and include placeholder content that can inspire and fuel your creativity.

To get started, we recommend that you choose one of the templates we’ve shared above and customize it to meet your specific needs using Visme’s intuitive editor. You can easily edit the content, replace images, apply custom colors, input your fonts and logo and much more.

If you’re racing against the clock and need to create your BCP quickly, consider using Visme’s AI Document Generator . Write a detailed prompt explaining what you want to create, choose the design theme and watch the tool produce a plan with ready-made design and content.

If you’re creating BCPs for different risks or processes, duplicate the template and use our Dynamic Fields feature to do that.

Just create custom fields on each plan and you can make changes to multiple documents with a single click.

When drafting your plan, it’s essential to ensure that it is easily accessible to all relevant personnel and outlines the roles and responsibilities of team members during a crisis. That way, everyone knows their specific duties and responsibilities, increasing the chances of a successful response during a crisis.

9. Test and Revise the Plan

A BCP is only effective if it's tested regularly. Conduct tabletop exercises, simulations and drills to test the effectiveness of the BCP, identify weaknesses and ensure everyone understands their roles. Evaluate your company’s response to various scenarios and identify areas for improvement.

The BCP is a living document. Based on the outcomes of testing and exercises, document flaws and lessons learned and use them to update the BCP accordingly. Likewise, review and update it periodically to reflect changes in your business environment, technology or regulatory requirements.

Moreover, regularly train your employees on their roles and responsibilities during a crisis. Ensure they understand how to access and implement the BCP during a disruption. Read this article to learn how to create a successful training program that not only educates but engages your employees.

Q. Why Is a Business Continuity Plan (BCP) Important?

A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is important because it helps your organization prepare for, respond to and recover from unexpected events that could disrupt normal business operations.

BCPs outline the procedures and strategies a company should follow during a disaster, such as a cyber attack, natural disaster or any other unforeseen event that could affect the organization's ability to operate normally.

By having a BCP in place, businesses can minimize the impact of a disruption and quickly resume operations, which can help reduce downtime, prevent financial losses and ultimately protect the organization's reputation.

Q. Who Is Responsible for a Business Continuity Plan?

A business Continuity Plan (BCP) typically falls under senior management or a designated team within an organization.

This team is responsible for identifying potential risks and threats that could impact the organization's operations, developing a BCP that outlines the steps to be taken in the event of a disruption and ensuring that the plan is regularly reviewed and updated.

In some cases, organizations may choose to hire external consultants or engage with third-party service providers to develop and implement a BCP.

Q. How Often Should You Create a Business Continuity Plan?

A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) should be created, reviewed and updated on a regular basis to ensure that it remains relevant and effective.

The frequency of reviews and updates will depend on several factors, including the size and complexity of your organization, the level of risk it faces and any changes to the business environment or regulatory landscape.

Many organizations review their BCPs annually, while others may opt for a more frequent review cycle, such as quarterly or bi-annually. However, you need to update it whenever there are significant changes to your organization's operations, such as introducing new products or services, changes in the workforce or modifications to IT systems.

Q. Why Do Business Continuity Plans Fail?

Business Continuity Plans (BCPs) can fail for a variety of reasons, including:

• Insufficient planning: Failure to recognize all possible risks and threats, unrealistic assumptions regarding the consequences of a disruption or neglecting the requirements of key stakeholders.
• Poor communication: Communication breakdown can lead to a poor execution of the plan. Employees may not be aware of their roles and responsibilities or may not have the information required to make informed decisions during a crisis.
• Failure to Test the BCP: Not regularly testing and updating the BCP through drills, exercises or simulations can result in an inability to recognize weaknesses or gaps in the plan.
• Lack of resources: A lack of resources, including funding and personnel, can also contribute to the failure of a BCP, as it may be difficult to implement and maintain the plan without adequate support.
• Overlooking human factors: BCPs that fail to account for human factors, such as panic, fatigue, or misinformation during emergencies, may struggle to manage the psychological and behavioral aspects of crisis response.

Q. How Long Does It Take to Create a Business Continuity Plan?

The time it takes to create a business continuity plan can vary depending on the size and complexity of your organization. Generally, it can take several weeks to several months to develop a comprehensive plan. With Visme’s AI document generator, you can create one in a fraction of the time.

Q. What Are the Six Phases of Business Continuity Planning?

The six phases of business continuity planning are as follows:

• Project initiation and management: This phase involves identifying the scope of the business continuity plan and selecting a team to oversee its development and implementation.
• Risk assessment: This phase involves identifying potential risks and hazards that could disrupt business operations and analyzing their potential impact.
• Business impact analysis: Once potential risks have been identified, the next step is to conduct a business impact analysis to understand the possible consequences of a disruption to different areas of the organization.
• Design and development of the business continuity plan: This phase is where you create the business continuity plan, which includes detailed procedures and protocols to be followed in the event of a disruption. It also covers all areas of the organization and outlines the roles and responsibilities of each team member.
• Testing and training: It is crucial to test and train employees on the business continuity plan to ensure that it is effective and that everyone knows what to do in the event of a disruption. This could involve tabletop exercises, simulations or full-scale tests.
• Plan maintenance and improvement: The business continuity plan should be regularly reviewed and updated to ensure that it remains effective and up-to-date. This could involve incorporating feedback from tests and exercises, updating contact information or revising procedures based on changes in the organization or external factors.

Streamline Your Planning & Documentation With Visme

A well-crafted BCP is the key to ensuring your business’ resilience and long-term success.

This article provides everything you need to develop a robust BCP that prepares your organization to respond to and recover from various disruptions effectively.

Now is the time to make it count. Visme offers an extensive library of templates, AI-powered tools, an infinite whiteboard, analytics and advanced features to streamline business continuity planning. You can easily collaborate with stakeholders, brainstorm and create a plan that’s not only robust but also easy to execute and update.

Get started on creating your business continuity plan today with Visme. Sign up now to ensure your business is prepared for any unexpected disruptions.

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7 Real-Life Business Continuity Plan Examples You’ll Want to Read

• May 13, 2024
• 11 min read

It’s no secret that we believe in the importance of disaster preparedness and  business continuity  at every organization. But what does that planning actually look like when it’s put to the test in a real-world scenario?

Today, we look at 7 business continuity examples to show how organizations have worked to minimize downtime (or not) after critical events.

Business Continuity Examples & Failures

1) ransomware disrupts ireland’s healthcare system.

For years, healthcare organizations have been a top target for ransomware attacks. The critical nature of their operations, combined with notoriously lax IT security throughout the industry, are a magnet for ransomware groups looking for big payouts.

But despite the warnings, healthcare orgs still remain vulnerable. A prime example was the 2021 ransomware attack on Ireland’s healthcare system (HSE) – the fallout from which was still being felt nearly a year later.

According to reports, the attack had a widespread impact on operations:

• Dozens of outpatient services were shut down
• IT outages affected at least 5 hospitals, including Children’s Health Ireland (CHI) at Crumlin Hospital
• Employee payment systems were knocked offline, delaying pay for 146,000 staff
• Covid-19 test results were delayed and a Covid-19 vaccine portal went offline
• Appointments were canceled across numerous facilities and medical departments
• Near-full recovery and restoration of all servers and applications took more than 3 months

All told, the attack was projected to cost more than $100 million in recovery efforts alone. That figure does not include the projected costs to implement a wide range of new security protocols that were recommended in the wake of the attack.

Like several of the business continuity examples highlighted below, the Ireland attack did have some good disaster recovery methods in place. Despite the impact of the event, there were several mitigating factors that prevented the attack from being even worse, such as:

• Once the attack was known, cybersecurity teams shut down more than 85,000 computers to stop the spread.
• Disaster recovery teams inspected more than 2,000 IT systems, one by one, to contain the damage and ensure they were clean.
• Cloud-based systems were not exposed to the ransomware.

However, there was some luck involved.

As HSE raced to contain the damage from the attack and secured a High Court Injunction to restrain the sharing of its hacked data, the attackers suddenly released the decryption key online. Without that decryption, HSE would  not  have had adequate data backup systems to recover from the attack. As the group concluded in its  post-incident review :

“It is unclear how much data would have been unrecoverable if a decryption key had not become available as the HSE’s backup infrastructure was only periodically backed up to offline tape. Therefore it is highly likely that segments of data for backup would have remained encrypted, resulting in significant data loss. It is also likely to have taken considerably longer to recover systems without the decryption key.”

2) The city of Atlanta is hobbled by ransomware

There has been no shortage of other headline-making ransomware attacks over the last few years. But one that stands out (and whose impact reverberated for at least a year after the incident) was the March 2018 SamSam  ransomware attack on the City of Atlanta .

The attack devastated the city government’s computer systems:

• Numerous city services were disrupted, including police records, courts, utilities, parking services and other programs.
• Computer systems were shut down for 5 days, forcing many departments to complete essential paperwork by hand.
• Even as services were slowly brought back online over the following weeks, the full recovery took months.

Attackers demanded a $52,000 ransom payment. But when all was said and done, the full impact of the attack was projected to cost more than $17 million. Nearly $3 million alone was spent on contracts for emergency IT consultants and crisis management firms.

In many ways, the Atlanta ransomware attack is a lesson in inadequate business continuity planning. The event revealed that the city’s IT was woefully unprepared for the attack. Just two months prior, an audit found 1,500 to 2,000 vulnerabilities in the city’s IT systems, which were compounded by “obsolete software and an IT culture driven by ‘ad hoc or undocumented’ processes,” according to  StateScoop .

Which vulnerabilities allowed the attack to happen? Weak passwords, most likely. That is a common entry point for SamSam attackers, who use brute-force software to guess thousands of password combinations in a matter of seconds. Frankly, it’s an unsophisticated method that could have been prevented with stronger password management protocols.

Despite the business continuity missteps, credit should still be given to the many IT professionals (internal and external) who worked to restore critical city services as quickly as possible. What’s clear is that the city did have  some  disaster recovery procedures in place that allowed it to restore critical services. If it hadn’t, the event likely would have been much worse.

3) Fire torches office of managed services provider (MSP)

Here’s an example of business continuity planning done right:

In 2013, lightning struck an office building in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, causing a fire to break out. The offices were home to Cantey Technology, an IT company that hosts servers for more than 200 clients.

The fire torched Cantey’s network infrastructure, melting cables and burning its computer hardware. The equipment was destroyed beyond repair and the office was unusable. For a company whose core service is hosting servers for other companies, the situation looked bleak. Cantey’s entire infrastructure was destroyed.

But ultimately, Cantey’s clients never knew the difference:

• As part of its business continuity plan, Cantey had already moved its client servers to a remote data center, where continual backups were stored.
• Even though Cantey’s staff were forced to move to a temporary office, its clients never experienced any interruption in service.

It was an outcome that could have turned out very differently. Only five years prior, the company had kept all of its client servers on site. But founder Willis Cantey made the right determination that this setup created too many risks. All it would take is one major on-site disruption to wipe out his entire business, as well as his clients’ businesses, potentially leaving him exposed to legal liabilities as well.

Cantey thus implemented a more comprehensive business continuity plan and moved his clients’ servers off-site. And in doing so, he averted disaster. This makes for an excellent business continuity plan case study that demonstrates how proper planning can significantly reduce the risk of a major operational disruption.

4) Computer virus infects UK hospital network

In another  post , we highlighted one of the worst business continuity examples we saw in 2016 – before ransomware had become a well-known threat in the business community.

On October 30, 2016, a nasty “computer virus” infected a network of hospitals in the UK, known as the Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust. At the time, little was known about the virus, but its impact on operations was devastating:

• The virus crippled its systems and halted operations at three separate hospitals for five days.
• Patients were literally turned away at the door and sent to other hospitals, even in cases of “major trauma” or childbirth.
• In total, more than 2,800 patient procedures and appointments were canceled because of the attack. Only critical emergency patients, such as those suffering from severe accidents, were admitted.

Remarkably, a report in Computing.co.uk speculated that there had been  no  business continuity plan in place. Even if there had been, clearly there were failings. Disaster scenarios can be truly life-or-death at healthcare facilities. Every healthcare organization must have a clear business continuity plan outlined with comprehensive measures for responding to a critical IT systems failure. If there had been in this case, the hospitals likely could have remained open with little to no disruption.

The hospital system was initially tight-lipped about the attack. But in the year following the incident, it became clear that ransomware was to blame – specifically, the Globe2 variant.

Interestingly, however, hospital officials did not say the ransomware infection was due to an infected email being opened (which is what allows most infections to occur). Instead, they said a misconfigured firewall was to blame. (It’s unclear then exactly how the ransomware passed through the firewall—it may have come through inboxes after all.) Unfortunately, officials knew about the firewall misconfiguration before the attack occurred, which is what makes this incident a prime example of a business continuity failure. The organization had plans to fix the problem, but they were too late. The attack occurred “before the necessary work on weakest parts of the system had been completed.”

5) Electric company responds to unstable WAN connection

Here is another example of well-executed business continuity.

After a major electric company in Georgia  experienced failure  with one of its data lines, it took several proactive steps to ensure its critical systems would not experience interruption in the future. The company implemented a FatPipe WARP at its main site, bonding two connections to achieve redundancy, and it also readied plans for a third data line. Additionally, the company replicated its mission-critical servers off-site, incorporating its own site-failover WARP.

According to Disasterrecovery.org:

“Each office has a WARP, which bonds lines from separate ISPs connected by a fiber loop. They effectively established data-line failover at both offices by setting up a single WARP at each location. They also accomplished a total site failover solution by implementing the site failover between the disaster recovery and main office locations.”

While the initial WAN problem was minimal, this is a good example of a company that is planning ahead to prevent a worst-case scenario. Given the critical nature of the utility company’s services (which deliver energy to 170,000 homes across five counties surrounding Atlanta), it’s imperative that there are numerous failsafes in place.

6) German telecom giant rapidly restores service after fire

Among the better business continuity examples we’ve seen, incident management solutions are increasingly playing an important role.

Take the case of a German telecom company that discovered a dangerous fire was encroaching on one of its crucial facilities. The building was a central switching center, which housed important telecom wiring and equipment that were vital to providing service to millions of customers.

The company uses an incident management system from Simba, which alerted staff to the fire, evaluated the impact of the incident, automatically activated incident management response teams and sent emergency alerts to Simba’s 1,600 Germany-based employees. The fire did indeed reach the building, ultimately knocking out the entire switching center. But with an effective incident management system in place, combined with a redundant network design, the company was able to fully restore service within six hours.

7) Internet marketing firm goes mobile in the face of Hurricane Harvey

Research shows that 40-60% of small businesses never reopen their doors after a major disaster. Here’s an example of one small firm that didn’t want to become another statistic.

In August 2017, Hurricane Harvey slammed into Southeast Texas, ravaging homes and businesses across the region. Over 4 days, some areas received more than 40 inches of rain. And by the time the storm cleared, it had caused more than $125 billion in damage.

Countless small businesses were devastated by the hurricane. Gaille Media, a small Internet marketing agency, was  almost one of them. Despite being located on the second floor of an office building, Gaille’s offices were flooded when Lake Houston overflowed. The flooding was so severe, nobody could enter the building for three months. And when Gaille’s staff were finally able to enter the space after water levels receded, any hopes for recovering the space were quickly crushed. The office was destroyed, and mold was rampant.

The company never returned to the building. However, its operations were hardly affected.

That’s because Gaille kept most of its data stored in the cloud, allowing staff to work remotely through the storm and after. Even with the office shuttered, they never lost access to their critical documents and records. In fact, when it came time to decide where to relocate, the owner ultimately decided to keep the company decentralized, allowing workers to continue working remotely (and providing a glimpse of how other businesses around the world would similarly adapt to disaster during the Covid-19 pandemic three years later).

Had the company kept all its data stored at the office, the business may never have recovered.

Examples of business continuity failures

Some of the real-life business continuity examples above paint a picture of what can go wrong when there are lapses in continuity planning. But what exactly do those lapses look like? What are the specific mistakes that can increase a company’s risk of disaster?

Here are some examples of business continuity failures due to poor planning:

• No business continuity plan: Every business needs a BCP that outlines its unique threats, along with protocols for prevention and recovery.
• No risk assessment: A major component of your BCP is a risk assessment that should define how your business is at risk of various disaster scenarios. We list several examples of these risks below.
• No business impact analysis: The risk assessment is useless without an analysis of how those threats actually affect the business. Organizations must conduct an impact analysis to understand how various events will disrupt operations and at what cost.
• No prevention: Business continuity isn’t just about keeping the business running in a disaster. It’s about risk mitigation as well. Companies must be proactive about implementing technologies and protocols that will  prevent  disruptive events from occurring in the first place.
• No recovery plan:  Every disaster scenario needs a clear path to recovery. Without such protocols and systems, recovery will take far longer, if it happens at all.

Examples of threats to your business continuity

It’s important to remember that business-threatening disasters can take many forms. It’s not always a destructive natural disaster. In fact, it’s far more common to experience disaster from “the inside” – events that hurt your productivity or affect your IT infrastructure and are just as disruptive to your operations.

Example threats include:

• Cyberattacks
• Malware and viruses
• Network & internet disruptions
• Hardware/software failure
• Natural disasters
• Severe weather
• Flooding (including pipe bursts)
• Terrorist attacks
• Office vandalism/destruction
• Workforce stoppages (transportation blockages, strikes, etc.)

The list goes on and on. Any single one of these threats can disrupt your business, which is why it’s so important to take continuity planning seriously.

Business continuity technology

Within IT, data loss is often the primary focus of business continuity and disaster recovery (BC/DR). And for good reason …

Data is the lifeblood of most business operations today, encompassing all the emails, files, software and operating systems that companies depend on every day. A major loss of data, whether caused by ransomware, human error or some other event, can be disastrous for businesses of any size.

Backing up that data is thus a vital component of business continuity planning.

Today’s  best data backup systems  are smarter and more resilient than they were even just a decade ago. Solutions from Datto, for example, are built with numerous features to ensure continuity, including hybrid cloud technology (backups stored both on-site and in the cloud), instant virtualization, ransomware detection and automatic backup verification, just to name a few.

Like other BC initiatives, a data backup solution itself won’t prevent data-loss events from occurring. But it does ensure that businesses can rapidly recover data if/when disaster strikes, so that operations are minimally impacted – and that’s the whole point of business continuity.

Examples of business continuity plan

By now, you’re starting to get the picture: business continuity planning is crucial. But how do you actually create the plan? What does the document look like?

While each business’s BCP is unique to its needs, the foundation of the plan is generally the same for most organizations. The core goal is to document a company’s risks and outline what is needed to avoid an operational disruption.

Here are some examples of business continuity plan components to include in your documentation:

• Objective: Outline the key goals of the plan, especially as they relate to specific business units or systems.
• Contact Information: Include communication information for the people responsible for overseeing continuity planning or for those who will manage disaster recovery efforts.
• Risk Assessment: Outline the specific disaster scenarios that put the business at risk of an operational disruption and their likelihood of occurring.
• Business Impact Analysis: Document in clear terms how each type of disaster will affect the business, including impact on various operations, estimated recovery time and associated financial losses.
• Preventative Measures: Outline the procedures, plans and systems that will help the company minimize the risk of various disasters from occurring.
• Disaster Response Plan: Document the specific protocols that should be followed immediately following a disruption to minimize the impact.
• Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery Systems: Outline the systems and procedures that should be used to maintain continuity or recover from an outage.
• Backup Locations & Contingency Assets: Identify any secondary resources that should be leveraged if primary resources are unavailable, such as backup office spaces, servers, devices, office furniture and so on.
• Communication Plan: Outline how the organization will distribute information to employees or between recovery teams if primary communication lines are unavailable.
• Continuity Testing: Document how recovery procedures and systems in the plan should be tested to confirm they are effective, and the frequency for conducting those tests.
• Continuity Gaps & Recommendations: Be clear about any limitations in the current planning and what steps are recommended to fill those gaps.
• Plan Review & Update Schedule: Create a schedule for reviewing and updating the business continuity plan to ensure the documentation remains accurate and relevant.

Examples of business continuity plans can differ by industry, but most companies will want to incorporate all of the components above, regardless of business size or sector.

Business continuity plan case study

In February 2023, a ransomware attack struck Karmak – a prominent technology solutions provider for the trucking industry. However, the company acted quickly to contain the attack before it disrupted its operations or customers, providing a solid case study for how to maintain continuity during a cyberattack.

Karmak’s business continuity planning played a key role in averting disaster. According to an industry trade publication, Karmak had a “detailed cyberattack response plan, which went into effect immediately after the attack.” The company used security monitoring solutions to detect and thwart the attack. Plus, employees had been rigorously trained on cybersecurity and knew how to respond.

End result: Karmak contained the attack within hours, preventing customer data from breached and minimizing the impact on internal systems.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. what is an example of business continuity.

Any scenario in which a business can continue to operate through a disruptive event is an example of business continuity. For example, a company facing a ransomware attack might maintain business continuity by restoring infected files from a data backup.

2. What are examples of business continuity plans?

An example of a business continuity plan is a comprehensive document that assesses a business’s risk for operational disruptions and outlines the steps for avoiding such disruptions. Example components of the plan include a risk assessment, business impact analysis, communications plan and disaster recovery plan.

3. What is a real-life example of business continuity?

The Covid-19 pandemic illustrated many real-life examples of business continuity. Companies took several measures to continue operating during the health crisis, such as allowing employees to work from home, instituting physical distancing and providing protective equipment to critical workers.

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Avoid a major operational disruption with today’s best technology for business continuity, disaster recovery and cybersecurity. Schedule a meeting with one of our data-protection specialists at Invenio IT or contact us by calling (646) 395-1170 or by emailing  [email protected] .

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What is a Business Continuity Plan (BCP)? Purpose, Template & Examples

• Author Marie Laure Troadec
• August 29, 2023

Hire borderless talent with Horizons

Key Takeaways

1.  A business continuity plan is an essential risk management tool that helps organizations proactively prepare for unexpected disruptions and events, ensuring the continuity of critical operations.

2.  By identifying and assessing potential risks and threats to their operations, businesses can develop appropriate response strategies to prevent or minimize disruption during challenging times.

3.  Businesses should avoid certain pitfalls to successfully implement their business continuity plan. These include a lack of employee engagement, an over-reliance on technology, and a failure to test their plans.

4.  By proactively addressing these areas, businesses can increase the chances of successful implementation and execution of their business continuity plans.

Ensuring business continuity is a topic high on the agenda for most businesses and one that has become increasingly paramount in light of recent events: Few things have focused attention on the need to have a contingency plan more than the COVID-19 pandemic. The potential disruption caused by a pandemic, or indeed any other unforeseen event, to a business’s operations can have significant financial, legal, and reputational ramifications that can be mitigated or even prevented if appropriate measures are put in place.

This article delves into the essential elements of a business continuity plan (BCP) and provides valuable guidance on avoiding common pitfalls to help your business implement and execute a robust plan that safeguards your operations.

What is a Business Continuity Plan?

A business continuity plan is a risk management strategy that a business implements to protect its operations in the face of an unexpected event or disruption such as a natural disaster, cyberattack, or technological failure. By anticipating and preparing for potential crises or unplanned eventualities, businesses can take preemptive measures to ensure they remain operational and maintain a sense of normalcy despite interruptions.

The business continuity planning process enables businesses to assess potential threats to their operations and identify vulnerabilities that could impact their ability to function effectively. Through the implementation of a business continuity plan, business leaders can swiftly respond to emergencies, minimizing any potential downtime and mitigating the negative effects on their operations. This proactive approach can help businesses navigate challenging situations with relative ease and resilience, ensuring minimal impact on their productivity and profits.

Main Elements of a Business Continuity Plan

A robust and effective business continuity plan will comprise the following key elements that facilitate business resilience and preparedness during uncertain times.

• Business impact analysis
• During this phase, a business will identify and assess potential risks and threats to their organization’s operations. A business impact analysis (BIA) assesses the potential consequences of disruptions in critical business functions. This allows businesses to prioritize resources, allocate budgets, and develop strategies to minimize downtime and facilitate recovery.  
• Recovery strategies
• This step addresses the risks identified in the BIA by developing appropriate responses to prevent or minimize disruption. Recovery strategies outline the immediate actions required following an incident, those responsible for implementing them and coordinating the allocation of resources.
• Plan development
• The plan development phase involves developing the framework of the business continuity plan by establishing the relevant recovery teams, establishing communication channels, creating relocation plans, and gaining management buy-in.
• Testing and maintenance
• This phase involves training and testing the relevant teams and systems by conducting exercises to measure the effectiveness of the business continuity plan and identifying areas for improvement. Processes are also established for regularly reviewing and updating the business continuity plan to account for changes in technology, previous incidents, and evolving threats and risks.

Common Business Continuity Plan Pitfalls

To ensure the efficacy of their response during unexpected events or disruptions, organizations should be mindful of common mistakes encountered in the business continuity planning process. 

An awareness of the following issues can help businesses avoid certain pitfalls which could hinder their efforts in this area:

1. Lack of employee engagement

The success of any business continuity plan hinges on an organization’s ability to execute it successfully as even the most comprehensive and detailed plan will fall flat if it is ineffective in real-world situations.

The successful execution of a business continuity plan goes beyond senior management. To ensure business continuity in times of trouble it is essential that those on the ground have also been briefed on contingency measures and are ready to step into action accordingly.  Without adequate employee training and awareness, organizations run the risk of compromising critical business functions leading to further disruptions and losses.

By prioritizing employee engagement and involvement in the business continuity plan, organizations can strengthen and streamline their response efforts ensuring a robust and resilient response to potential disruptions, while fostering a culture of confidence and preparedness within their organization.

2. Overreliance on technology

While technological solutions play a crucial role and should be a feature of any robust business continuity plan, an overreliance on digital services and technical infrastructure can pose potential challenges for organizations. 

Sole or heavy reliance on this area increases the risk of a single point of failure. This is especially pertinent at a time when cyberattacks and data breaches are prevalent creating vulnerabilities in a business’ technological systems, and thereby undermining the effectiveness of its business continuity plan. Unforeseen events such as natural disasters which can lead to infrastructure damage and power outages can also severely compromise an organization’s ability to function effectively during a crisis.

To counter these problems, organizations should incorporate a diverse range of technological and non-technological solutions into their business continuity plan, taking into account manual processes and alternatives that are not solely dependent on digital services. Data backup options should also be put in place to help businesses restore swift operations and minimize extended downtime.

3. Failure to test

Without proper testing, the effectiveness of a business continuity plan remains theoretical rather than proven in practice. Regular testing enables businesses to identify and address any gaps or limitations in their plan, avoiding the risk of critical business functions being left vulnerable in an actual crisis situation.

Through drills, real-life simulations, and tabletop exercises, organizations can learn from real-world incidents, gaining practical insight into the feasibility of their business continuity plans and identifying any areas that require improvement. Regular testing plays a crucial role in helping businesses to optimize their response strategies and ensure resilience and readiness in the face of difficult or unforeseen circumstances.

By proactively addressing and avoiding these common pitfalls, businesses can develop comprehensive business continuity plans that help to bolster their resilience, minimize disruptions, and ensure the continuity of their operations during challenging times.

BCP Template

The precise content of your BCP will depend on the nature of your business. However, below is a useful template for a typical business: 

1. Introduction

• Purpose: Outline the purpose of the BCP.
• Scope: Specify which parts of the organization this BCP covers.
• Assumptions: State any assumptions made during the BCP’s creation.

2. Business Continuity Policy

Outline the company’s policy regarding business continuity. This can include the company’s commitment to employee safety, client service, data protection, etc.

3. Roles and Responsibilities

List the key personnel responsible for executing the BCP:

• Business Continuity Manager/Coordinator
• Crisis Communication Team
• Emergency Response Team
• IT Recovery Team
• Employee Assistance Team

4. Risk Assessment

Identify potential risks and threats:

• Natural disasters
• Technological failures
• Security breaches

5. Business Impact Analysis (BIA)

Identify the potential impacts of each threat:

• Financial impacts
• Reputational impacts
• Operational impacts
• Legal/Regulatory impacts

6. Business Continuity Strategies

Outline strategies for:

• Data backup and recovery
• Alternate work locations
• Communication protocols
• Supply chain management

7. Incident Response Plan

Details the immediate actions to be taken following an incident:

• Alert and notification procedures
• Evacuation procedures
• Safety checks

8. Recovery Plans

For each critical department/function, provide a detailed plan on how to resume operations:

• IT systems recovery
• Resumption of critical business functions
• Communication with stakeholders

9. Training and Testing

Outline how the plan will be tested and how often, as well as any training programs for employees:

• Tabletop exercises
• Full-scale drills
• Employee training sessions

10. Maintenance and Review

Describe how the plan will be kept current:

• Regularly scheduled reviews
• Updates following any changes in the business environment or operations
• Feedback loop from testing

11. Communication Protocols

Specify how communication will be maintained:

• Emergency contact lists
• Communication methods (phone, email, etc.)
• External communication (with media, stakeholders, etc.)

12. Appendices

• Resource lists
• Vendor contacts
• Floor plans
• Backup data locations

Business Continuity Plan Examples

If you are looking for some other examples of well-designed BCPs and BCP templates, check out the following: 

• Durham County Council’s BCP
• Chisholm & Winch (UK Construction Company)
• Ready (US Government Disaster Response Resource).

Developing and implementing business continuity plans

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Contact us today to learn how we can support your business continuity efforts and provide the stability and peace of mind you need in an ever-changing world. 

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Business Continuity Plan

A business continuity plan (BCP) is an essential business document that outlines how a business will continue its critical functions during and after an emergency event or disruption in business.

Emergency events can also include natural disasters, workplace violence, utility failures, cyber-attacks, supply shortages, economic downturns, or any event that will result in the disruption of business processes.

The COVID-19 Pandemic:

The COVID-19 (Coronavirus) pandemic is a real-world example of an emergency situation in which a business continuity plan should be instituted.

Business Continuity Plan Template Download

Download this business continuity plan template in MS Word format and start using it straight away.

Why is it Important To Have a Business Continuity Plan?

In times of crisis, having a business continuity plan in place will ensure your business is able to function, before, during, and after an emergency event.

A BCP will clearly outline the people and procedures involved in running your business when the worst happens. A Busines Continuity Plan is beneficial because:

• It is required by many business regulators, investors, and stakeholders.
• It provides a sense of security for managers and staff.
• It will allow your business to provide reasonable service to your customers during and after an emergency.
• It will allow you to preserve your revenue stream and your reputation.
• It can provide additional insight into your organization.

What Should Be Included In A Business Continuity Plan:

Business continuity plans are as varied and complex as businesses themselves. Every plan is different and should be based on the needs of your company and your customers. Here are a few general examples of what a BCP should include:

• The scope and purpose of your plan.
• Your plan's goals and objectives.
• A comprehensive list of tasks required to keep your operations going.
• The roles and responsibilities of your BCM team and your staff.
• The contact information for management and key BCM staff.
• Maintenance protocols for your plan.
• Information about site and data backups.
• Information on where to go in an emergency.
• Procedures to coordinate with emergency personnel.

How to Build a Business Continuity Plan:

A step-by-step guide to creating a business continuity plan.

Identify the scope of your plan.

Perform a regulatory review..

Before you create your business continuity plan, first consider the expectations and regularity standards that come from external stakeholders including investors, external partners, and auditors.

Identify the objectives of your plan.

When creating a comprehensive business continuity plan, a key step is to identify the objectives of your plan and then set goals accordingly. Here you should be considering how detailed your plan should be and which departments and staff members should be involved.

Define the outcome of your plan.

When creating the scope of your plan, you should also define the successful outcome of your plan and which milestones should be tracked during an emergency.

Form the business continuity management team.

Decide on the size of your team..

The business continuity management team is responsible for implementing and executing your BCP. The size of your team is dependent on the size of your company and the way in which you plan on rolling out your program.

Identify your key business areas and critical functions.

Complete a risk assessment..

The next step is to perform a detailed risk assessment on your company. A risk assessment allows you to understand the physical, financial, reputational, and operational risks to your company should a major disruption occur.

Have your team create a detailed list of threats and risks that would impact your business and rate them according to the likelihood of occurrence and severity. Examples of risks and exposures include:

• Natural disasters.
• Global pandemics.
• Staffing shortages.
• Cyber attacks.
• Single point disruptions.
• Disruptions to the supply chain.
• Political instability.

Conduct a business impact analysis.

A business impact analysis will help you identify your business's core needs and determine the potential impact resulting from the disruption of business. Examples of impacts to consider include:

• Increase in customer dissatisfaction.
• Damage to company reputation.
• Loss of sales or income.
• Loss of equipment or data.
• Delay or loss of new business.
• Regulatory fines.

Identify your business processes and determine which would cause the most damage to the company if they were to fail. Classify each of these functions or processes as either:

Find out which business objectives they support, how often they occur, which departments they affect, and what other aspects of the business are dependent on these to function? Your BIA report should document the potential impact resulting from business disruptions and provide information that can be used in your recovery strategies.

Create an incident response plan.

Outline your operations plan..

This should be the most comprehensive section of your business continuity plan. You can break down operations activities into prevention strategies, response strategies, and recovery strategies.

Come up with prevention strategies.

In this section, you should detail any preventative measures that should be taken before a disruption occurs. This may include creating remote work solutions for your employees, having backup utility providers, alternative network resources, data backups, and server backups.

Detail response strategies.

Response strategies are needed when there is an emergency or sudden disruption of business. This section should detail what each member of your business continuity team should do in the event of an emergency. This includes evacuation procedures, safety protocols, and staff communications.

Plan your recovery strategies.

Recovery strategies ensure that critical business processes are restored after an emergency event or major disruption in business. Your plan should have a detailed description of the actions necessary to keep your business functional until all personal, systems, and facilities are operational again.

Develop a training curriculum.

Implement a training curriculum..

Once your business continuity plan is complete, it is important to implement a training curriculum for your business continuity management team and your company employees. Training should include a basic overview of your BCP as well as relevant and tactical exercises designed to test your continuity procedures.

It may be worth staging a mock emergency to establish the efficacy of your plan and highlight areas of improvement.

Conduct annual reviews.

Review and update your plan..

As your business grows and changes so should your business continuity plan. It is important to conduct annual reviews of your BCP to ensure that it aligns with your current processes and requirements. Updates should be made to evacuation procedures, staff contacts, and communication methods as needed.

Business Continuity Management Services:

For larger businesses, it may be worth employing the services of a business continuity consulting and management company to review your BCP. These services may include:

• A comprehensive assessment of your current business continuity plan.
• Gap analysis.
• Recommendations and long-term planning.
• Annual updates.
• Training exercises.

Layoff Letter Due to COVID-19 (Coronavirus)

What is a business continuity plan?

A business continuity plan is a document detailing how your business will continue to function during an emergency or major disruption of business.

What is the primary goal of business continuity planning?

To minimize the damage to your business in the event of an emergency or disruption of business.

What does a business continuity plan typically include?

• The scope, purpose, and policy of your plan.

Is business continuity the same as disaster recovery?

No, disaster recovery is part of a business continuity plan which is designed to ensure that your business stays functional before, during, and after an emergency. Disaster recovery focuses on restoring operations after a major disruption in business.

When should I update a business continuity plan?

Your business continuity plan should be reviewed and updated annually or whenever you make major changes to your production processes.

Related Articles:

Disaster recovery plan, recruiting strategies, life-sustaining businesses, what is full life cycle recruiting, what is strategic staffing.

16 Business Continuity Plan Templates For Every Business

As a business leader, you know that unforeseen events can disrupt your business operations and impact your bottom line. That's why having a solid business continuity plan in place is essential.

But where do you start? That's where we come in. This article provides you with 16 free, customizable business continuity plan templates that are prefilled with examples, making it easy to create a plan that meets your unique needs. Whether you're a small business or a large enterprise, our templates are designed to help you prepare for any contingency.

In addition to the templates, we've included a step-by-step guide on how to create an effective business continuity plan. From identifying risks and critical functions to testing and updating your plan, our guide covers everything you need to know.

General Business Continuity Plan Template

New to business continuity planning? No worries! Our general BCP Template is like a friendly guide—perfect for both newcomers and veterans. Use it to get the ball rolling on your continuity planning initiative and create robust strategies that will keep your business operational in times of crisis.

How to use this template? 👀

1. Sign up to get instant access to your chosen template. (Yes, it’s 100% free.) 

2. Customize the template to fit your needs: 

• Define your focus areas or strategic priorities 
• Set strategic objectives  
• Assign KPIs and owners 
• Create action plans and projects to achieve your desired outcomes 

3. Integrate all business data in one place for a comprehensive view of performance. 

4. Use reports and dashboards to monitor progress and identify risks before they escalate. 

5. Invite your team members to collaborate and ensure everyone is working toward the same goals. 

👉 Click here to get your FREE Business Continuity Plan Template

💡All templates below follow the same structure. The only difference lies in the pre-filled sample data, making them customized for specific industries and use cases.

Industry-Specific Business Continuity Plan Templates

Hospitality bcp template.

Craft a resilience plan for your hospitality business, including hotels, restaurants, or travel services. This BCP template for Hospitality will help you establish measures to handle potential emergency situations and ensure customer satisfaction.

👉 Click here to get your FREE Hospitality Continuity Plan Template

Manufacturing BCP Template

Ensure uninterrupted production and operations with this Manufacturing Continuity Plan Template . Use this template to keep your business partner relationships, supply chains, and production lines strong, even when surprises pop up.

👉 Click here to get your FREE Manufacturing Continuity Plan Template

Transportation BCP Template

Need a solid game plan for spotting risks early and building strong strategies to manage disruptions in your transportation business? Create your own with the BCP Template for Transportation to maintain timely deliveries and operations.

👉 Click here to get your FREE Transportation Continuity Plan Template

Healthcare BCP Template

In an industry where lives depend on service reliability, the Healthcare Business Continuity Plan Template helps you build and execute contingency plans to ensure uninterrupted care and handle emergencies effectively.

👉 Click here to get your FREE Healthcare Continuity Plan Template

Retail BCP Template

Strengthen your retail business's resilience to unforeseen events like global pandemics, supply chain disruptions, or surges in demand. With this Retail BCP Template , establish plans for inventory management, customer service, and store operations.

👉 Click here to get your FREE Retail Business Continuity Plan Template

Pharmaceuticals BCP Template

Keep vital manufacturing and supply chain operations running like clockwork with our Pharmaceuticals BCP Template . This template has everything you need to hit the ground running on your continuity planning. Use it to ensure your business doesn’t miss a beat because of trade disputes, regulations, and recalls.

👉 Click here to get your FREE Pharmaceutical Business Continuity Plan Template

Financial Services BCP Template

The BCP Template for Financial Services is designed to assist financial professionals concerned about their continuity and resilience. Use it to identify and plan strategies to keep your business sailing steady and navigate business continuity management like a seasoned professional.

👉 Click here to get your FREE Financial Business Continuity Plan Template

Telecommunications BCP Template

Our Business Continuity Plan Template for Telecommunications is ideal for internet service providers, telcos, and MSPs that want to keep their telecommunication services humming along, no matter what. Use it to outline strategies to reduce the risk of disruptions such as new technology, regulatory changes, and cyber-attacks.

👉 Click here to get your FREE Telecommunications Business Continuity Plan Template

IT BCP Template

Create a comprehensive continuity plan for your information technology business with the IT Business Continuity Plan Template . This template will help you formulate and execute strategies for data center security, network downtime planning, and maintaining service levels. 

👉 Click here to get your FREE IT Business Continuity Plan Template

Nonprofits BCP Template

Ensure that your nonprofit's mission endures through unexpected events and map out your organization's preparedness with the Business Continuity Plan Template for Nonprofits . This template guides nonprofits in developing strategies for funding, communication, and service delivery during crises such as natural disasters. 

👉 Click here to get your FREE Nonprofit Continuity Plan Template

Small Business BCP Template

Build resilience and safeguard your small business to weather uncertainties with the Small Business Continuity Plan Template . With this prefilled template, you’ll be able to kickstart the strategic planning process to build effective recovery procedures and disaster mitigation strategies.

👉 Click here to get your FREE Small Business Continuity Plan Template

Special Focus Templates 

Supply chain continuity template.

Strengthen the resilience of your supply chain with this Supply Chain Business Continuity Plan Template . Use it to create and track strategies to mitigate risks such as supplier failures, transportation disruptions, and inventory shortages, ensuring a steady flow of goods and services.

👉 Click here to get your FREE Supply Chain Continuity Plan Template

Operational Continuity Plan Template

Keep your business operations running smoothly, irrespective of unforeseen challenges, with the Operational Continuity Plan Template . With it, you can quickly create an actionable Continuity of Operations Plan (COOP) that guarantees your business’s preparedness when disaster strikes.

👉 Click here to get your FREE Operational Continuity Plan Template

Risk Assessment Plan Template

Risk management is at the heart of any successful continuity planning strategy. Why? Because knowing the risks your organization faces is the first step to preparing for, and effectively navigating unforeseen circumstances. 

If you're ready to start building your BCP, begin with the Risk Assessment Plan Template . This framework is designed to help you pinpoint potential risks, measure their impact, and craft proactive strategies to dodge business disruptions.

👉 Click here to get your FREE Risk Assessment Plan Template

Crisis Communications Plan Template

Effectively manage internal and external communications during a crisis with this Crisis Communications Plan Template . Ensure the right messages reach your stakeholders, employees, and customers on time. This will contribute to a well-coordinated response and support your human resources team in managing crisis-related communications effectively.

👉 Click here to get your FREE Communications Plan Template

How To Write A Business Continuity Plan 

A clear business continuity plan helps teams act quickly and effectively, minimizing disruptions to operations. If you want to build a resilient business continuity plan, here's a true-and-tried approach:

1. Identify critical business processes and types of threats

First, figure out which parts of your business are the most important. Why is this so crucial? When things go wrong, you can't keep every part of your business going—it's just not practical.

But, many senior management teams stumble at this stage because they:

• Take a siloed approach to continuity planning.
• Misidentify the core processes integral to business success.
• Exclude critical stakeholders when trying to understand what drives the business.
• Rely on outdated risk assessments and information for planning.

As PwC puts it, " Businesses struggle to do this well because it’s complex and can involve multiple departments and players. It’s not the usual approach in which business continuity is looked at solely within the siloed functions. ”

To build a resilient BCP, thoroughly examine your business, engage all stakeholders, and really understand your key business functions and processes.

2. Perform a risk assessment

Risk assessments help companies understand potential threats, their severity, and their likelihood. This crucial step aids in prioritizing planning, encourages strategic thinking, and empowers problem-solving abilities.

💡 Check out our article Risk Matrix: How To Use It In Strategic Planning for guidance . 

3. Conduct a Business Impact Analysis and prioritize strategies

A Business Impact Analysis evaluates the possible consequences of risks on your crucial business operations . It’s vital for gathering information, developing appropriate recovery strategies, and setting strategic priorities.

Consider impact such as:

• Lost or delayed sales and income
• Increased expenses
• Regulatory fines
• Loss of business opportunities
• Operational setbacks
• Reputation damage
• Loss of shareholder confidence
• Supply chain disruption

4. Build your business continuity plan

Finally, it’s time to roll up your sleeves and turn your research, risk assessment, and business impact analysis into a fully-fledged business continuity plan. 

Your continuity plan should act as a roadmap. It should outline how your organization will keep the gears turning in the face of disruptions.

Here are the key elements: 

• 🎯 Objectives
• ⏳ Timelines
• 🏆 Priorities
• 👥 Team members
• 📝 Projects and action plans

If you’re using Cascade strategy templates , you’ll have these vital elements ready and waiting to help you plan faster and better.

💡Don't spend too much time on analysis and planning. There is no such thing as a perfect plan. Instead, focus on the execution and adapt your plan as you go. 

Tips For Writing And Executing Your Business Continuity Plan

Want to create a business that can ride the wave of any disruption? You'll need a fresh take on strategic risk management and continuity planning. The real magic happens when you blend centralized observability and fast execution . 

Creating your plan shouldn't be a one-and-done deal. You need to keep an eye on things and tweak your strategies as needed. This is where Cascade strategy execution platform shines.

Cascade’s customizable dashboards give you real-time insights into your business operations. See the big picture or drill down to team-specific details, all in one place. This helps in identifying issues early and implementing your continuity plan effectively.

Time is of the essence when a crisis hits. Decision-makers need information fast. Cascade's Reports lets you create concise strategy reports with up-to-date data and charts with a click. No more wasting time on manual reporting.

Continuity planning is an ongoing, iterative process. Risks change, and your strategies should evolve accordingly. With Cascade, you can continuously monitor performance and make necessary adjustments to your business continuity plan in one place.

“Cascade provides our organization with a level of transparency we've never experienced before. Traditionally siloed teams have insight into what other groups are working on, facilitating a new level of engagement and cross-team collaboration.” - Katie B, G2

📚 Recommended reads for more tips and best practices: 

6 Steps To Successful Strategy Execution

Strategic Control Simplified: A 6-Step Process And Tools  

Get Faster Insights And Make Better Decisions With Cascade 🚀

As the world’s #1 strategy execution platform, Cascade cuts through the chaos of running business operations and paves a clear path forward.

Build continuity plans that are data-driven and aligned with your long-term vision.

Cascade helps you diagnose where you stand today and understand the factors affecting your performance, leading to informed and confident decisions.

What’s more, Cascade centralizes visibility over your execution process. This means you can swiftly identify dependencies and potential risks, and act proactively to mitigate them.

Ready to take control? Sign up for a free forever account today or book a 1:1 product tour with one of Cascade’s in-house strategy execution experts.

Business Continuity FAQs

What are the 4 ps of business continuity .

The 4 Ps of business continuity is a way of measuring the impact of disruptions on an organization. They stand for People (the impact on the lives of workers), Processes (the effect on operations), Profits (the impact on revenue generation), and Partnerships (the impact on the enabling business environment).

What is the difference between a business continuity plan and a disaster recovery plan? 

The main difference between a business continuity plan and a disaster recovery plan is its purpose. A business continuity plan aims to sustain the critical functions of an organization during disruptions, while a disaster recovery plan outlines the strategy for restoring normal business operations after major disruptions.

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Business Continuity Plan Template

Prepare for business disruption and disaster recovery with digital templates and checklists.

• Eliminate paperwork with digital checklists
• Generate reports from completed checklists
• Free to use for up to 10 users

Use this Business Continuity Plan (BCP) template as an outline for your business continuity plan that will critically assess all aspects of the business and make sure the emergency procedures and equipment are adequate. This business continuity template can help with ISO 22301 compliance and allow business continuity managers and consultants to:

• Identify key business functions and components to be prioritized for restoration and recovery during an emergency.
• Add list of processes/equipment most at risk of disrupting business operations.
• Discuss roles and responsibilities of key personnel and gather confirmation (digital signatures).

Click on the Web or PDF report below to view the business continuity plan example.

What is a Business Continuity Plan Template?

A business continuity plan template is a tool used by business continuity managers and IT teams to outline strategies for keeping businesses operational despite emergencies such as extreme weather events, building evacuations, power outages, etc. It identifies high business impact operational areas, assets, and recovery strategies with assigned personnel. Business continuity templates can be used in any industry for IT disaster recovery, continuity of customer-facing operations, and backup of transport and logistics operations.

Why Use a BCP Template?

Business continuity plan templates help organizations protect their business amid a crisis or emergency. This ready-to-use document provides a structured framework, ensuring the plan is comprehensive and no essential detail is overlooked. It is also typically customizable, allowing businesses to modify them according to their specific needs.

• Seamless Recovery/Restoration Process – In the face of a crisis, time is of the essence. A BCP template expedites the recovery and restoration process by providing a predefined framework. This ensures that businesses can bounce back swiftly, minimizing downtime and preserving essential operations.
• Proper Documentation – Effective documentation is the cornerstone of a robust BCP. The template guides businesses in creating comprehensive documentation, ensuring that every aspect of the plan is clearly articulated. This not only aids in swift implementation but also facilitates better understanding among stakeholders.
• Regulatory Compliance – Ensure that the BCP aligns with relevant industry regulations and standards, such as ISO 22301 , NIST SP 800-34, or industry-specific guidelines.
• Data Protection and Privacy – Address data protection laws and regulations, such as GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) or HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), to safeguard sensitive information during a continuity event.
• Legal and Contractual Obligations – Include provisions to comply with legal and contractual obligations, ensuring that the organization’s commitments to clients, customers, and partners are maintained even during disruptions.
• Health and Safety Regulations – Incorporate measures to comply with health and safety regulations to protect employees and stakeholders during emergencies or disasters.
• Communication Requirements – Define communication protocols and reporting mechanisms to comply with regulatory expectations for timely and accurate communication with internal and external stakeholders.
• Financial Regulatory Compliance – Address financial regulatory requirements to ensure the organization’s financial processes are maintained and comply with relevant laws

What to Include in a Business Continuity Plan Template

Here’s a Business Continuity Plan report example:

Business Continuity Plan Template | Preview Sample PDF Report

BCP serves as a guide for organizations to create an effective strategy for responding to potential business-disrupting events. Here are four key components of a BCP:

Scope & Objectives

States the purpose of the BCP, including specific business functions that should be prioritized for recovery during an emergency. This section should include examples of emergency events that would trigger the response of this BCP.

Operations at Risk

Includes possible risks with key operational functions which would greatly disrupt business and customer continuity. This also involves the magnitude of risk to each function, which will help the BCP committee decide on appropriate preventive actions.

Recovery Strategy

Outlines all the relevant procedures to restore business operations after an incident or crisis. A good recovery strategy includes a realistic recovery timeline and essential emergency resources.

Roles & Responsibilities

Refers to key personnel and their assigned tasks during or after an incident. Each committee member has a unique set of responsibilities to successfully carry out the BCP for each business function.

FAQs about BCP Templates

How often should you update your bcp document.

BCP documents should be updated regularly. If any organizational changes have been made in terms of team structures and operational procedures, the BCP should be updated. A review will be conducted to check if the information in the BCP is still reliable.

Why is it important to conduct regular BCP audits using templates?

Outdated BCPs might result in a loss of customer trust, huge revenue loss, and damage to brand and company reputation. This is why it is crucial for BCPs to remain up-to-date. Regular BCP audits are essential to help evaluate emergency procedures and identify if there are vulnerabilities.

What are the four components of a BCP template?

A business continuity plan template typically includes detailed information about the plan’s scope and objectives, the operations or functions that might be affected and the risks associated with them, recovery strategies for uninterrupted operations, and the specific roles and responsibilities of essential personnel during and after an incident.

Establish a Strong Business Continuity Plan with SafetyCulture

SafetyCulture (formerly iAuditor) , the world’s leading digital form mobile software, can help businesses create and prepare a strong business continuity plan more efficiently.  With SafetyCulture as a business continuity software , businesses can switch to a paperless planning process where you can create your own templates, easily assess the accuracy of recovery procedures, and update your plans as needed on your mobile device.W ith SafetyCulture, you can:

• Create and customize business continuity plan templates using your desktop, iPad, or even on your mobile phone
• Assign action tasks to key personnel and BCP committee members
• Maintain business quality control with analytics , uncover leading trends, and be able to identify areas for improvement
• Generate professional reports to share with your stakeholders in a format of your choice (PDF, Word, CSV)
• Upskill your employees by deploying bite-sized training courses that doesn’t interrupt your teams’ workday.

To help you get started on your paperless planning, we have created business continuity templates and checklists you can download and customize for free.

Featured Business Continuity Plan (BCP) Templates

It business continuity plan template.

This business continuity and disaster recovery plan template aims to help IT teams and business continuity managers become proactive in preparing for events that could disrupt operations and come up with strategies for disaster recovery.

Business Continuity Plan Checklist

Perform regular audits of your organization’s BCP with a business continuity plan checklist. Whether small or medium business, this checklist can be used to ensure BCPs are up to date and reflect current high-impact operations.

Small Business Continuity Plan Template

Small businesses and other organizations can use this BCP template as a planning tool that can guide them on what to do during crises. This ready-to-use document specifically indicates aspects such as the emergency planning team, plans for coordinating with customers and suppliers, critical operations, and who’s in charge of them, among others.

School Business Continuity Plan Template

This generic school business continuity plan template is especially useful for academic organizations. It is customizable and can be modified to meet the needs of users. 

Business Continuity Procedure Template

Use this generic BCP template to easily provide a continuity plan for you, your team, and your business. To get started, you can specify the overall threat and its risk level, review cycle, response, plans, and standard operating procedures (SOPs).

SafetyCulture Content Team

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Business Continuity Simplified

By Andy Marker | December 17, 2018 (updated October 24, 2021)

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Unexpected work interruptions can cripple a business and cause millions of dollars in expenses and lost business. Learn about the importance of business continuity planning and management from experts. 

In this article, you’ll learn the definition of a business continuity plan and the primary goal of business continuity planning . Additionally, you’ll learn the steps involved in business continuity planning and about the business continuity lifecycle .

What Is Business Continuity Management?

In business continuity management (BCM) , a company identifies potential threats to its activities and the threat impact. The company then develops plans to respond to those threats and continue activities through any crisis.

What Is a Business Continuity Plan?

A business continuity plan (BCP) describes how a business will continue to run during and after a crisis event. The BCP details guidelines, procedures, and work instructions to aid continuity.

To learn more about writing a plan, see our how-to guide to writing a business continuity plan .

What Is Business Continuity Planning?

Business continuity planning (BCP) refers to the work a company does to create a plan and system to deal with risks. Thorough planning seeks to prevent problems and ensure business processes continue during and after a crisis.

Business continuity planning ensures that the company deals with disruptions quickly, and minimizes the impact on operations. Business continuity planning is also called business resumption planning and continuous service delivery assurance (CSDA) .

What Is the Primary Goal of Business Continuity Planning?

The main goal of business continuity planning is to support key company activities during a crisis. Planning ensures a company can run with limited resources or restricted access to buildings. Continuity planning also aims to minimize revenue or reputation losses.   

A business continuity plan should outline several key things that an organization needs to do to prepare for potential disruptions to its activities, including the following:

• Recognize potential threats to a company.
• Assess potential impacts on the company’s daily activities.
• Provide a way to reduce these potential problems, and establish a structure that allows key company functions to continue throughout and after the event.
• Identify the resources the organization needs to continue operating, such as staffing, equipment, and alternative locations.

Business Continuity Planning Steps

A business continuity plan includes guidelines and procedures to guide a business through disruption. The efforts to create a plan are the same for large or small organizations. A simple plan is better than no plan. 

The basic steps for writing a business continuity plan are as follows:

• Create a governance team.
• Complete your business impact analysis (BIA) and risk assessment documents.
• Document your plan. Remember to include detailed guidelines and procedures that cover key processes and facilities.
• Test and update the plan regularly.

The Business Continuity Management Lifecycle

Business continuity management includes preparing for and handling unexpected events. BCM has a six-step lifecycle. This cycle repeats during both in regular business times and crises, as you take the right steps to keep activities always running.

The BCM lifecycle includes the following points:

• Mitigate Risk: Proactively identify business continuity risks to your company, and plan how your company will respond.
• Prepare: Train staff on your business continuity plan and ensure they understand what they need to do to help the business respond.
• Respond: Ensure that your company and all employees respond appropriately to a crisis. Be prepared to adapt in the moment.
• Resolve: Ensure that the company plans how to communicate effectively with staff and that it does so appropriately during the crisis.
• Recover: Inform employees, customers, and other important people about the status of the crisis and your company’s response.
• Resume: Communicate with employees and others after the crisis ends.

What Are Business Continuity Risks or Events?

Also called business continuity events, business continuity risks are the most common events that can disrupt a company’s regular operations — these can be natural and human-made crises. Defining these risks is a vital part of business continuity planning.

Such events might include the following:

• Severe weather
• Natural disasters (tornadoes, floods, blizzards, earthquakes, fire, etc.)
• A physical security threat
• A recall of a company’s product
• Supply chain problems
• Threats to staffing and employee safety
• Accidents at an organization’s facilities
• Destruction to a company’s facilities or property
• Power disruptions
• Server crashes
• Failures in public and private services (communications, transportation, safety, etc.)
• Environmental disasters, including hazardous materials spills
• Network disruptions
• Human error/human-made hazards
• Stock market crashes
• Cyber attacks and hacker activity

Any of these triggers can result in broader problems for a company, such as danger or injury to staff and others, equipment damages, brand injury, and loss of income and net worth. Business continuity management and planning address and mitigate these contingencies.

What Is a Business Continuity Strategy?

A business continuity strategy is more often called a business continuity plan. The strategy includes the processes and structure a company uses to manage an unexpected event.

Some people consider business continuity strategy to be a step in the planning process. In the strategy phase, business continuity planners describe the overall approach a company should take to prevent, manage, and recover from a crisis.

An Overview of Business Continuity Management and Planning

There are several goals, key elements, and benefits to business continuity management and planning. The primary goals of management and planning are as follows:

• Build Company Resiliency: Doing so means that your company’s tools, buildings, and operations are resistant to — and not greatly affected by — most disruptions.
• Create a Plan for Recovery (with Contingencies that Aid in That Recovery): If a major event does cause problems, you should have a plan for how to recover quickly. That plan will include contingencies. For example, you should plan for how key operations will resume if there is a widespread power outage.

Business continuity management and planning generally cover the following areas, with differences depending on the organization and industry:

• Disaster Recovery: Disaster recovery involves recovering technology after a disruptive event. You can learn more about disaster recovery and download free templates in our comprehensive article .
• Emergency Management: Emergency management focuses on avoiding and mitigating catastrophic risks to staff and communities.
• Business Recovery: Considered part of business continuity, business recovery centers on short-term activities after a disruptive incident. The short-term is sometimes defined as less than 60 days.
• Business Resumption: This describes the longterm phase of recovery (60 or more days after an even), wherein the company returns to near-normal conditions.
• Crisis Management: Crisis management focuses on communicating with stakeholders during and after a crisis, and controlling damage during the event. To learn more, read our comprehensive guide to crisis management .
• Incident Management: Incident management is an ITIL (previously known as Information Technology Infrastructure Library) framework for reducing or eliminating downtime after an incident.
• Contingency Planning: This covers outlier risks that are unlikely to occur but which could have disastrous results.

“A well managed business continuity management program will help protect people, assets, and business processes,” says Scott Owens, founder and managing director of BluTinuity , a business continuity firm based in New Berlin, Wisconsin. “It may not be able to prevent all incidents. But it can reduce the likelihood of incidents, decrease response time, and lower the cost and impact of an incident.”

Key Elements of Business Continuity Management

All business continuity management programs should include a number of key elements, which serve to ensure that your plan is positioned for success and that you regularly update and improve it.   

These important elements include the following:

• Governance: This is the structure and team your business sets up to create and monitor the program.
• Business Alignment: This section details how your company’s current business continuity management and planning processes compare to expert approaches and industry standards.
• Continuity Strategy and Recovery Strategies: Include a detailed plan that assesses risks to your organization and how you can recover, should those risks become reality.
• Plan Documentation: Provide details on the plan that everyone in your company can access. To get started, see our roundup of free business continuity plan templates .
• Tactical Implementation: This section includes details on the specific ways your company plans to recover from certain types of incidents.
• Training: In this section, detail how you will train your staff to understand the business continuity plan and their role in it.
• Testing: Include real-world simulations of a crisis event, and test how your company and its employees respond and the effectiveness of your business continuity plans.
• Maintenance: Make changes to the plan where necessary to increase its effectiveness.
• Monitoring: This section details how you will continue to compare industry standards and expert advice to how your plan is working.

To learn about formal requirements for business continuity planning and management, see our comprehensive article on the ISO 22301 standard . 

The Costs of Business Continuity Management

The costs to do an appropriate job of business continuity management can be significant. However, some reports say that the cost of unforeseen downtime may be as much as $2.5 billion a year for Fortune 1000 companies.

Kurt Engemann, Ph.D., is Director of the Center for Business Continuity and Risk Management at Iona College in New York, Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Business Continuity and Risk Management and author of Business Continuity and Risk Management: Essentials of Organizational Resilience . In the book, he says that costs for business continuity preparation do not only include the groundwork to assess a company’s risks and plans to manage those risks. Rather, they also cover the needed backup facilities and equipment and company assets for emergency response. In addition, costs must cover resources for training employees and testing the plan.

Some experts have estimated that business continuity management and planning within only the crucial information technology aspects of companies can cost two to four percent of the information technology budget. But the costs are necessary, and worth it in the long run, according to business continuity experts.

“There is an initial outlay of a modest amount of money that will lessen the financial impact of a possible future crisis,” Engemann writes in his book. “Similar to an insurance policy, the financial benefit of BCM must be viewed from a long-term prospective.”

When an organization’s top executives complain about the costs, Owens says, “Ask them what it would cost their organization for an hour of downtime. Or eight hours. Or 24 hours. Chances are the cost — financial, operational, and to brand and reputation — of having key business functions unavailable for an extended period are significant. They will most likely find business continuity management to be worth the investment.” 

Benefits of Business Continuity Management

Like Engemann, Owens points out that there are significant benefits to the investment organizations make in business continuity management, including the following:

• Mission Critical Processes: If you understand your key processes, you can plan to protect them and prioritize their recovery.
• Legal and Regulatory Compliance: Laws or regulations require companies in some industries to implement a formal business continuity management system.
• Satisfying Demands from Other Organizations: Some groups and companies may require that your company sets up BCM before they do business with you.
• Insurance Payments: To get the maximum payments from an insurance policy after an event, a company must have suitable business continuity management policies in place.
• Reputation Management: Your business’s brand will be greatly helped or hurt, depending on how an unforeseen event affects its operations.
• Competitive Advantage: A strong business continuity plan can offer your company the advantage over peers who are not as well prepared.
• Seamless Recovery: Cloud-based technologies make data backup, remote work, and business recovery affordable and accessible. Groups and businesses of all sizes can benefit from such tools. See our article on cloud computing for business continuity to learn more.
• Time Savings: Planning prevents teams from scrambling at the last minute to cobble together a recovery effort. Strong planning helps you get back online — and back on track — faster.

Michael Herrera, CEO of MHA Consulting , a business continuity and disaster recovery firm, cites two other significant benefits: 

• Keeping Customers and Avoiding Major Financial Losses: Getting operations back to normal quickly after an event means your company loses less money.

“Your customers aren’t as patient as you think they are,” Herrera explains. “They expect you to have a business continuity system and they expect you to be up and running. Their patience does run out.”

• Improving Day-to-Day Operations: Herrera says his firm’s clients often discover how business continuity planning gives them insights into the day-to-day operations of their company. “It really can help you with process improvement and getting a good understanding of what your business does every day.”

Additionally, strong business continuity planning will enable you to do the following:

• Officially declare a disaster and alert senior management.
• Assist in the development of an official public statement regarding a disaster and its effects on a business.
• Monitor your business’s progress and present the recovery status.
• Provide ongoing support and guidance to teams with pre-planned operations.
• Review critical processing, schedules, and backlogs to keep everyone up to date on status.
• Ensure businesses have both the resources and the information to deal with an unforeseen emergency.
• Reduce the risk that an emergency might pose to employees, clients, and vendors, etc.
• Provide a response for both man-made and environmental disasters.
• Improve overall business communication and response plans.
• Summarize both the operational and the financial impacts resulting from the loss of critical business functions.
• Allow businesses to plan for a loss of function that has potentially larger, more severe consequences.

See our article on the importance and benefits of business continuity planning to read more expert examples of how business continuity can bolster your company. 

Key Business Continuity Management and Planning Considerations

Companies don’t have to face business continuity planning alone. There are a variety of tools and services that can help, including the following:

Consultant Services

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of consultants and companies that can provide help with developing your business continuity plan. Below are a few things to think about in choosing one:

• How experienced are they? How long have they been around?
• What’s their reputation as a company? What do their clients say about them?
• Are they focused on a specific industry or area of business continuity, or do they have experience with a range of industries and a broad spectrum of business continuity?
• How do they think about business continuity (as a somewhat separate practice or something that needs to be ingrained within your organization)?
• How aligned is their advice with standards in your industry?

Business Continuity Software

There are also hundreds of pieces of business continuity software on the market. Here are some things to consider:

• Are you looking for software that will automate the development of plan components, or software that offers more in-depth help during the planning phase?
• What is the history of the software and the company behind it? How long has this particular software been on the market and what is the history and the reputation of the company behind it?
• Is the software being continually updated and improved?

Below are some specifics to consider as you test drive the software:

• Does it have an easy-to-use interface?
• Does it cover all aspects and components of business continuity, including business impact analysis and risk assessment ?
• Does it include sufficient storage for your company’s supporting documents?
• Does it provide secure portable access via mobile or other technologies, if a crisis interrupts your information technology systems?
• Does it provide strong data analytics?
• Is it secure and private?

Primary Things Your Organization’s Business Continuity Management System Should Accomplish

While your business continuity management system will have various elements and details, there are some primary things it should do for your organization. They correspond to the key elements listed earlier in this article. 

For example, a BCM system should help do the following: 

• Understand your company’s needs for business continuity and disaster preparedness. A BCM system should be able to assist company leaders in understanding the need for a business continuity management policy.
• Understand which processes should be recovered and in what order.
• Establish business continuity metrics to gauge success.
• Plan for communicating with customers, staff, and other stakeholders.
• Determine what tools, technology, and staffing are required to restore activities and support customers.
• Establish remote-work support or relocation plans for staff and activities.
• Implement ways to continually assess and manage continuity risks.
• Monitor and review how its business continuity management system is working.
• Continually improve the system.
• Respond effectively in a real-world crisis, and allow the business’s critical operations to continue and all operations to resume quickly.

Although nobody wants to think about disasters or the effort needed to prepare to meet and mitigate crises, the alternative is the potential loss of reputation, income, or the entire business. In sum, planning translates to determining your key processes, equipment, and tools, and applying basic recovery strategies. 

The Importance of Senior Organizational Leaders Strongly Supporting Your Business Continuity Management and Planning

Your senior leaders must strongly support your company’s business continuity management plan for it to succeed. Such leadership is key as storms, floods, pandemics, and data breaches increase in force and frequency.

“Make sure senior management is committed to the planning, development, execution, and implementation of a business continuity/disaster recovery program,” says Paul Kirvan , a business continuity consultant and a fellow of the Business Continuity Institute with 25 years of experience in business continuity work. “Otherwise, it simply won’t happen. Such programs work best if they have top-down support and funding, as opposed to being developed from the ground up.”

Business Continuity Plan Test Types

Testing verifies the effectiveness of your plan and provides training for participants. To ensure better communication, include suppliers, vendors, and other stakeholders in exercises. If appropriate, also consider including local emergency preparedness officials.  

There are four types of testing, and each requires increasing levels of planning, resources, and focus. You should try to run each type of drill regularly.

• Plan Review: Plan reviews are often the first test applied to a new plan. In this test, top management and some key BCP personnel review the relevance and completeness of a plan. Such a review can verify risk and BIA results, and help you check for gaps and inconsistencies among continuity documents.
• Tabletop or Structured Walkthrough: A tabletop test requires more preparation and time. It provides a role-playing exercise for recovery teams.
• Simulation or Walkthrough Drill: In a walkthrough drill, your continuity team physically completes the type of tasks they'd find in a crisis. They may practice evacuating a building during a fire, restoring a backup, or switching to another communication frequency.
• Functional or Live Scenario: Functional tests include a complete physical drill of continuity plans. Live tests may focus on one aspect of the plan or include the complete plan. They may include one part of the company or all team members.

Be sure to document what happened in the test so everyone involved in the exercise — and especially those who created the plan — can understand what did and didn’t go well, and can revise as necessary.

Business Continuity Management Policy Statement

A business continuity policy statement is a written document that outlines an organization’s business continuity management program. The policy statement should be communicated to all employees and should be signed and endorsed by the organization’s senior management.

See real-world examples of a business continuity policy statement .

Cultivating Awareness of Business Continuity Plans

The best business continuity system is useless if no one knows about it. Find ways to promote your plans in daily company activities, and discuss business continuity regularly in company and team meetings. Also, be sure to include the business continuity manager in cross-functional planning meetings so they can represent the business continuity perspective. Above all, exercise your plan, test your plan, and then test again.

What Is the Importance of a Business Continuity Plan?

A business continuity plan is vital to ensure that your company mitigates downtime during a crisis. Resuming activities quickly after an event also helps ensure your company’s financial health.

How to Write a Business Continuity Plan

It is crucial that your company set up a group of people to help create your business continuity plan. The group should include senior leadership, experts, and staff. A simple, practical plan is the best plan. At a minimum, include continuity team roles and duties, and team member contact information. You should also add guidelines and checklists for dealing with unforeseen events. 

Daily business functions rely on many resources — human, utilities, machines, and even paper, pens, and pencils. Business recovery after a disruptive event is no different. See our in-depth article on writing a business continuity plan for a complete list of resource types you may want to include in a plan.

You can ask certain questions as you form your strategy, and a business continuity plan usually includes common resources and elements. See our article on how to write a business continuity plan to learn more.

Business Continuity Plan Template

This template can help you document and track business operations in the event of a disruption/disaster to maintain critical processes. The plan includes space to record business function recovery priorities, recovery plans, and alternate site locations. Plan efficiently for disruption and minimize downtime, so your business maintains optimal efficiency.

Download Business Continuity Plan Template

Word | PowerPoint | PDF

You’ll find other most useful free, downloadable business continuity plan (BCP) templates, in Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and PDF formats in this article . 

What Is a Business Impact Analysis and Why Is It an Important Part of a Business Continuity Plan?

A business impact analysis (BIA) is one of the most important parts of business continuity planning. The analysis considers how an unforeseen disruption could affect a company. BIA results also suggest how a business can recover from a crisis.

The business impact analysis will include details on the following:

• Recovery time objectives that outline the organization’s goals relating to how quickly various services and processes will resume after an event
• Financial impact of an incident
• Impact on customers
• Other possible impacts of an incident
• How the organization will prioritize recovery steps
• How the organization will prioritize critical services or products
• Identification of potential revenue loss
• Identification of additional expenses the organization will incur because of the event
• Identification of insurance an organization has or needs to have
• Identification of an organization’s dependencies on other agencies, companies, and providers

See our business impact analysis toolkit to find guidelines and templates to get started.

Risk Mitigation for Business Continuity

Risk assessment is one of the first steps in preparing your business continuity plan. 

Risk management includes identifying and ranking risks, and risk control includes identifying policies and procedures to avoid and contain risks. 

To learn more about risk management , read our comprehensive guide.

The Importance of Periodically Testing an Organization’s Business Continuity Plan

Even the best business continuity plans are useless if you do not continually test them in real-world mockups. Testing helps you continuously improve procedures, and also keeps plans synched with current business context.

Robert Sollars, a security trainer and consultant from Mesa, Arizona, says, “You must exercise your plan and train your employees in it. This can be costly and unwieldy at times, but it is an absolute must. I liken this to buying a Lamborghini and letting it sit in the garage, never starting it up, never driving it, never doing anything but admiring it. Your plan must be taken out and test driven at least two to three times per year. If you don’t test it, then when the real thing pops you will realize what the books, consultants, and experts have told you is useless for your organization. Testing it allows you to figure out the bugs and tweak the necessary items to make it more efficient and effective.”

Owens adds, “If you haven’t tested your plans, you aren’t ready for a disaster.”

You can do some testing through simpler table top exercises — for example, by talking through hypothetical incidents with your team. But Owens and other business continuity experts say organizations should also periodically do exercises that more closely mimic a real-world event.

“Organizations need to move … to progressively more complex scenarios, involving cross-functional teams and interdependent systems and processes,” he writes in a blog post about business continuity. “This is the only way that a company can get outside its comfort zone to truly understand if what they have designed will really work. My preference is to involve role-playing, actors, and include participation from vendors, business partners, and local law enforcement when appropriate. This will almost always result in lessons learned and opportunities to improve the plan, which is another great outcome.”

The most important result from testing your plan is an understanding of where theoretical solutions won’t work in real events. This understanding will then allow your organization to amend the plan to be more effective.

What Is a Business Continuity Plan Governance Committee?

Many companies set up a business continuity plan governance committee, which consists of staff members and senior leaders (their continuity efforts is vital). Governance tasks include writing the business continuity plan and supervising ongoing plan maintenance.  

The committee is often responsible for the following duties:

• Approving the governance structure of the committee
• Clarifying the roles of committee members and others working on the plan
• Overseeing the creation of working groups to develop and implement the plan
• Providing overall direction and communicate important information to employees
• Approving the continuity plan and essential specifics within it
• Setting priorities within the plan

The committee often includes the following members:

• A senior leader from the business, often the sponsor
• A business continuity manager and assistant manager
• The company employee, or outside consultant, who will serve as overall coordinator of the business continuity plan
• The company’s security officer
• The company’s chief information officer, or information technology leader
• Representatives from the company’s business department, to help with the business impact analysis
• An administrative representative

How to Cultivate Resilience in Your Organization

A resilient organization has the tools and abilities to survive a disruptive event, and also regularly looks for new threats and adapts to changes in the organizational and industry landscape. Resilience experts recognize two types of resilience: reactive resilience uses a company’s existing processes to meet and overcome a crisis; proactive resilience anticipates disruptions and considers methods to prevent problems.  

Real World Example: Lessons Learned About Business Continuity from the Terrorist Attacks of Sept. 11, 2001

Organizational leaders and business continuity experts learned a lot from the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Worst of all, the attacks killed thousands of people. But they also severely disrupted communications, financial transactions, and some commerce in New York City and throughout the world.

The following are among the lessons learned:

• Business continuity plans must be tested frequently, and updated where needed.
• The plans must assume a wide range of threats.
• The plans must take into account how much companies, agencies, and other entities depend on each other.
• Key people from any organization must be available and reachable when an incident happens.
• The ability to communicate, especially through landline phones, cell phones, and the internet, is vital.
• Sites that organizations use for backup of their digital information should be located at a distance from their primary information technology site.
• Employee support and counseling may be important during and after a crisis.
• An organization should store copies of its business continuity plan at a location apart from its primary location.
• Security perimeters around the scene of an incident may be large, which may affect employees’ access to organization facilities for long periods.

Legislation Governing Some Business Continuity Management and Planning

The United Kingdom did approved the Civil Contingencies Act in 2004, which requires businesses to have business continuity plans in place.

Some industries do have regulatory bodies that may impose business continuity requirements within those industries. For instance, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) is a private self-regulatory organization overseeing the U.S. financial securities industry. FINRA established FINRA Rule 4370. This rule requires securities firms to create and maintain written business continuity plans. Utility bodies, such as North American Electric Reliability Corporation ( NERC ) and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ( FERC ), also require continuity plans.

Guidelines, Standards, and Resources Providing Guidance on Business Continuity Management and Planning

Organizational leaders can use a number of standards set by industry and other groups to guide their business continuity planning and management programs. Below are some commonly used standards:

• ISO 22301 : Developed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), a standard-setting body, this group of standards sets out appropriate business continuity management practices. Learn more about how this standard can help businesses of all sizes in our guide to ISO 22301 . 
• NFPA 1600 : Developed by the National Fire Protection Association, the standard is one of the most widely recognized in the U.S. on emergency preparedness and business continuity.
• National Institute of Standards and Technology SP 800-34 : Sets contingency planning standards for federal information systems in the U.S.
• SPC-2009 — Organizational Resilience : Security, Preparedness and Continuity Management Systems provides critical business and infrastructure security standards developed by the American Society for Industrial Security.
• ISO 27000 : Standards for security in information technology systems, which include standards for business continuity in information technology. Learn more about ISO 27000 and find free checklists and templates . 
• DRI International : Professional Practices for Business Continuity Management
• Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA): Continuity Guidance Circular: Continuity Guidance for Non-Federal Entities: An 86-page formal document, the circular presents FEMA’s perspective on how businesses can prepare for disasters.
• Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety: Open for Business Continuity Toolkit: This site offers a video, FAQ, and downloadable continuity planning tools.

What Is the Business Continuity Institute?

The Business Continuity Institute (BCI), based in the United Kingdom, is a non-profit professional organization providing education, certification, and leadership on business continuity management. The Institute has more than 8,000 members in more than 100 countries.

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It’s not always fun thinking about things that could go wrong. But when you’re creating a business, taking the time to think about these things can help prevent risk. Creating a solid backup plan for your business can help ensure success—even if something bad happens. That’s where a business continuity plan can help.

What is a business continuity plan?

A business continuity plan (BCP) is a long-term strategy to help your business overcome and recover from major roadblocks. Creating a BCP ensures that, even if something goes wrong, your business still has a strategy in place to overcome that issue.

What’s the difference between a business continuity plan and a contingency plan?

What is a business continuity plan template.

A business continuity plan template is the basic framework of a continuity plan, which you can easily duplicate whenever you need to create a new plan.It’s intended to be used as a skeleton, so your team can fill it with the important information needed to establish a strong business continuity plan.

Using a business continuity plan template ensures that every single BCP you create has all the necessary information your team needs to make the plan successful. When there’s a repeatable framework, your team becomes more familiar with what information goes into a BCP. As a result, they’ll be more comfortable using the plan, should the situation arise. 

What components does a business continuity plan template have?

The goal of a business continuity plan template is to help everyone on your team understand what to do after an emergency happens. That means your BCP template should organize key information into the following categories. That way, your team can fill out the correct information when you build your strategy.

Directly responsible individuals (DRIs) or important tiger teams : These are the individual points of contact you would go to in case of an emergency. You’ll find contact information for the DRIs, plus the best way to reach them in this section.

Risk assessment: This includes risk analysis documents such as a risk register , which analyzes potential setbacks a project or your business may encounter. 

Action plan : The step-by-step plan your team will follow if an emergency happens.

Recovery procedures: This section details the steps your team should take to recover from any major business interruptions.

Crucial business functions: The key aspects of the business that are necessary to keep things functioning. These are the bare minimum operations that your business needs running smoothly if you want to stay functional. It’s important to highlight these functions so your team knows which areas to focus on should an emergency arise. 

Succession plan : In the event that leaders or DRIs are unable to fill a role, a succession plan provides a back-up person to take their place. 

Internal communication strategy: It’s important to develop a communication plan for how you share information with your entire team. Developing a communication strategy beforehand can help prevent misinformation and confusing messaging from going out to your team during emergency situations.

Alternate business processes (aka backup plans): This section details alternate ways your business can still function even if a part of it fails. This can include alternate vendors or suppliers, or manual workarounds for automated tasks. 

Why you should use a business continuity plan template

Using a business continuity plan template can help your team in a few different ways. Here’s how.

Faster recovery: When disaster happens, you want to be able to recover quickly to minimize the amount of downtime your company faces. Having a BCP template prepared can help minimize the amount of time it takes to develop a full BCP strategy.

Create multiple fail-safes: Sometimes one BCP is not enough. A BCP template can help you create multiple plans so you have more than one way to recover should an emergency occur. 

Insurance doesn’t cover everything: While insuring your business is a smart move, it won’t be able to help you in all situations, such as an economic downturn. Using a BCP template means your business is ready to develop a strategy before any external environments begin to change, so your team can start planning as soon as you catch wind of something on the horizon. 

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Creating a business continuity plan template is simple. Start by using collaborative work management software like Asana so that your entire team can access the template. From there, create sections for all of the key components of a BCP template—like directly responsible individuals (DRIs), risk assessments, action plans, recovery procedures, crucial business functions, succession plans, internal communication strategies, and alternate business processes.

What are the four P’s of business continuity planning?

When you start filling out the key information in a business continuity plan template, there are four segments that you should consider: people (meaning your employees and potential customers), processes (the steps you need to take to run your business), premises (the physical location or locations of your business), and providers (business partners like suppliers and vendors).

What is a business continuity plan checklist?

A business continuity plan checklist is a list of tasks your team should complete when experiencing an emergency or potential risk. It helps by minimizing the amount of disruptions your business experiences when encountering issues or roadblocks.The easiest way to create this checklist is by using a business continuity plan template. That way, you have the same checklist for every strategy you create.

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Business Continuity Plan Examples: A Complete Guide

Business continuity plan examples are increasingly crucial in today’s fast-paced business environment.

Imagine this scenario: You are the CEO of a thriving company. Out of the blue, a disaster strikes, halting activities and causing significant financial damages. Simultaneously, a nearby bank effectively manages a natural calamity to uphold continuous customer support. These outcomes highlight the critical significance of effective business continuity planning.

Are you aware of this? According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, almost 40% of small businesses never reopen after a disaster. Moreover, unless a business continuity plan is in place, organizations stand at a 90% risk of failure within two years following a disaster.

Imagine your company back on its feet post-disaster due to the business continuity design. This is not an improbable scenario. Big companies have proper workable BCPs.

This post will examine companies like IBM, Procter & Gamble, and Microsoft. How their business continuity planning strategies came through in ways they never could have imagined before.

So, let’s dive into these enlightening examples of the best in business continuity planning.

Table of Contents:

What is a business continuity plan, what is the primary goal of business continuity planning, what is included in a business continuity plan, why is a business continuity plan important, disaster recovery plan vs. business continuity plan, business continuity plan examples, how to create a bcp, what does a business continuity plan look like, benefits of business continuity plan.

First…

Definition: A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) ensures a company’s operations continue during disruptions. It outlines procedures to follow during emergencies. These emergencies can include natural disasters, cyber-attacks, or pandemics. The plan identifies critical functions and assigns responsibilities.

A BCP includes several key components:

It begins with a risk assessment . This helps to identify potential threats.

Next, it develops strategies to mitigate these risks.

It also includes a communication plan. This ensures all stakeholders are informed during a crisis.

Regular testing and updates ensure the plan remains effective. Training employees is also essential; they must know their roles during emergencies.

A well-developed BCP minimizes downtime. It protects the company’s assets and reputation and ensures compliance with legal and regulatory requirements.

Overall, a BCP is essential for business resilience and continuity.

The primary goal of business continuity planning is to guarantee that a company can sustain operations during emergencies. This includes reducing the amount of time and money lost. It also seeks to safeguard the company’s image and resources.

What is the purpose of a business continuity plan? Its purpose is to offer a systematic method for dealing with unexpected situations. This encompasses events like natural disasters, cyber-attacks, and other unforeseen circumstances. The plan ensures critical functions continue without significant interruption.

Effective business continuity planning involves risk assessment and mitigation strategies. It also includes regular testing and updates.

In general, the goal is to strengthen the company’s ability to bounce back and guarantee its ongoing viability.

A business continuity plan (BCP) is essential for maintaining operations during disruptions. It outlines strategies and procedures to manage crises effectively. Understanding the components of a business continuity plan is crucial for comprehensive preparedness.

• Risk Assessment : Identifies potential threats and their impact on operations.
• Business Impact Analysis (BIA) : Determines critical business functions and the effects of disruptions.
• Recovery Strategies : Develop methods to restore critical functions quickly.
• Plan Development : Documents the procedures and resources needed for continuity.
• Communication Plan: Ensures all individuals involved are kept informed in case of an emergency.
• Training and Assessment: Offers frequent training sessions for staff members and evaluates the plan to verify its efficiency.
• Maintenance and review: Involves regular updates to the plan to incorporate any changes in the business environment.

These parts guarantee a robust and efficient reaction to any emergency, protecting the company’s functions, resources, and image.

A business continuity plan (BCP) is crucial for any organization to ensure its resilience and sustainability during disruptions. The business continuity planning function helps organizations prepare for, respond to, and recover from unexpected events. Here are key reasons why a BCP is important:

• Reduces downtime: A business continuity plan guarantees that vital business operations remain operational in case of a disturbance. This minimizes downtime and sustains productivity.
• Ensures stability in finances: An effective BCP reduces disruptions in operations. Therefore, it safeguards the company’s income and diminishes the financial repercussions of a crisis.
• Protects reputation: Successful business continuity planning is crucial for preserving customer confidence and safeguarding the company’s image. How? by showcasing reliability and readiness.
• Ensures compliance with regulations: Industries require businesses to satisfy various legal and regulatory obligations. A BCP is one requirement that guarantees the company meets its responsibilities.
• Improves risk control: A BCP recognizes possible risks and specifies methods for minimizing them. It enhances the organization’s overall risk management structure.
• Enhances employee safety: A thoroughly planned BCP consists of procedures to guarantee employee safety in emergencies, creating a safe workplace.
• Assists in speedy recovery: Predefined recovery strategies of a BCP aid in the organization’s quicker return to regular operations. This minimizes the overall impact of the disruption.
• Supports business growth : A BCP demonstrates a proactive attitude towards risk management, which can boost investor trust and promote sustained business growth .

Disaster Recovery Plans (DRP) and Business Continuity Plans (BCP) are essential components of an organization’s risk management strategy. While they are often used interchangeably, they serve distinct purposes in ensuring business resilience during and after a crisis. Here is a comparison of the disaster recovery plan vs. the business continuity plan:

A business continuity plan (BCP) is essential for organizations to maintain operations during and after disruptions.

These plans outline procedures and strategies to manage crises effectively, ensuring minimal impact on business functions. Here are five examples of companies with notable BCPs:

IBM’s BCP focuses on safeguarding its vast global operations. The company has detailed plans for data recovery, ensuring that critical systems are quickly restored. IBM’s approach includes regular drills and updates to address emerging threats, such as cyber-attacks and natural disasters.

Procter & Gamble

Procter & Gamble’s business continuity planning prioritizes the supply chain’s resilience. The company has created plans to handle supplier disruptions and guarantee uninterrupted product availability. This involves diversifying suppliers and keeping adequate safety stock to protect against disruptions in the supply chain.

Microsoft’s BCP is centered on maintaining its cloud services and IT infrastructure. The plan includes comprehensive data backup and recovery processes, with multiple data centers worldwide to ensure redundancy. Microsoft also conducts regular security assessments and updates its BCP to address new technological threats.

Coca-Cola’s business continuity plan (BCP) emphasizes maintaining operations and recovering from disasters. The company has set guidelines for ensuring production and distribution continue during emergencies. This involves having backup plans for different manufacturing locations and organizing logistics to guarantee on-time product delivery.

Google’s BCP ensures the resilience of its search engine and other services. The plan includes robust data replication and failover systems across multiple geographic locations. Google regularly tests its BCP through simulations to prepare for various disaster scenarios, such as data center outages.

A well-crafted BCP outlines procedures and strategies to manage crises effectively.

What are the steps and stages in a business continuity plan? Here is a detailed guide to help you develop a comprehensive BCP:

• Risk evaluation: Recognize possible dangers that may affect your company. This encompasses things like natural disasters, cyber-attacks, and other crises. Evaluate the probability and potential consequences of each risk.
• Business Impact Analysis (BIA): Involves identifying the crucial business functions and processes necessary for the organization. Examine the effects of interruptions on these operations and set recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs).
• Strategy development : Develop strategies to mitigate risks and ensure the continuity of critical business functions. This includes creating backup solutions, alternative work locations, and supply chain diversification .
• Plan development : Document the procedures and resources needed to implement the continuity strategies. This should include detailed action plans, roles and responsibilities, and contact information for key personnel.
• Communication plan: Develop a communication strategy to update stakeholders during a crisis. These stakeholders include staff, clients, vendors, and governing entities. Ensure clear and timely communication channels are established.
• Training and testing: Consistently educate staff on their duties and obligations during a disruption. Perform drills and simulations to evaluate the efficiency of the (BCP) and pinpoint areas that need enhancement.
• Maintenance and review: Consistently evaluate and revise the BCP to mirror shifts in the business landscape and new risks. Make sure the plan stays applicable and efficient as time goes on.

A business continuity plan template provides a structured format for developing a comprehensive BCP. It ensures that all necessary components are addressed and organized efficiently. The template serves as a guide for identifying risks, outlining response procedures , and detailing recovery strategies.

Here are the key components of a business continuity plan

Executive Summary

• Brief overview of the BCP’s purpose and objectives
• Key goals for maintaining business operations during disruptions

Risk Assessment and Business Impact Analysis (BIA)

• Identification of potential threats (natural disasters, cyber-attacks, etc.)
• Analysis of critical business functions and their dependencies
• Assessment of the impact of disruptions on these functions

Recovery Strategies

• Detailed strategies for restoring critical business functions
• Data backup and recovery plans
• Alternative work arrangements (remote work, secondary locations)

Plan Development

• Step-by-step action plans for responding to specific types of disruptions
• Roles and responsibilities of key personnel during a crisis
• Contact information for internal and external stakeholders

Communication Plan

• Communication protocols for informing employees, customers, suppliers, and regulators
• Pre-drafted messages for various scenarios
• Designated communication channels (email, phone, social media)

Training and Testing

• Schedule for regular training sessions for employees
• Procedures for conducting drills and simulations
• Methods for evaluating the effectiveness of the BCP and identifying improvements

Maintenance and Review

• Regular review and update schedule for the BCP
• Procedures for incorporating changes in the business environment and emerging threats
• Documentation of revisions and updates

Here are five key benefits of having a business continuity plan:

• Minimizes downtime : A BCP ensures critical business functions can continue with minimal interruption during a crisis. This reduces downtime and maintains productivity, allowing the organization to deliver products and services consistently.
• Protects financial stability : A BCP helps mitigate financial losses associated with operational interruptions by preparing for potential disruptions. It ensures revenue streams remain steady and costs related to emergency responses are controlled.
• Enhances brand image: In a well-run BCP, an organization gives its customers, partners, and stakeholders a clear message. What message? That it is reliable and prepared for unprecedented occurrences. This helps maintain trust and faith, protecting the company’s reputation when needed.
• Guarantees compliance: In many instances, industries make business continuity and disaster recovery planning an integral part of business. BCP helps organizations meet these legal and regulatory standards to avoid penalties and unexpected legal issues.
• Enhances risk management : A BCP involves identifying and analyzing potential risks to the business. This proactive approach to risk management helps the organization prepare for and mitigate various threats, enhancing resilience and security.

What is a BCP checklist?

A BCP checklist is a tool for ensuring that all necessary components of a business continuity plan are included. It typically includes risk assessment, recovery strategies, communication plans, testing procedures, and maintenance schedules.

What are the 4 pillars of business continuity?

• Risk management : Identifying and assessing potential risks to the organization.
• Business Impact Analysis (BIA) : Evaluating the impact of disruptions on critical business functions.
• Recovery strategies : Develop plans to mitigate risks and restore operations.
• Testing and maintenance : Regularly testing and updating the continuity plan to ensure effectiveness.

What is the standard BCP plan?

The standard BCP plan outlines procedures and strategies to ensure business continuity during and after disruptions. It includes:

• Risk assessment
• Recovery strategies
• Communication plans
• Training procedures
• Testing protocols
• Maintenance schedules to minimize operational downtime

A robust Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is essential in today’s unpredictable business environment. Successful companies like IBM, Procter & Gamble, and Microsoft demonstrate the value of meticulous planning. Their ability to swiftly resume operations after crises shows the effectiveness of well-crafted BCPs.

The experiences of these industry leaders highlight the importance of preparation. A solid BCP enables companies to navigate disruptions smoothly, minimizing downtime and financial impact. This proactive approach protects the company’s reputation and ensures continuous operations.

Key components of a BCP include risk assessment, mitigation strategies, communication plans, and regular testing. These elements help minimize downtime and protect the company’s assets. Training employees on their roles during emergencies is also crucial for a plan’s success.

The ongoing maintenance and review of the BCP are critical to its relevance and effectiveness. Regular updates ensure the plan remains agile and responsive as threats evolve and business dynamics change.

A well-implemented BCP safeguards operations during disruptions and ensures long-term sustainability and growth. Learning from the best will guide you in developing effective BCPs. Adopt these proven strategies and continually update your plans to enhance your company’s resilience.

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• Business Continuity Plan Basics
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Frequently Asked Questions

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The Bottom Line

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

Investopedia / Ryan Oakley

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.

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

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How to write a business continuity plan template

To avoid the common pitfalls associated with growing a successful business, you’ll need to come up with a long-term plan. A business continuity plan template can help you anticipate and avoid disruptions to your company.

Unanticipated threats can wipe out your assets, while risky courses of action can lead to disastrous results. Take the pandemic as an example, which wrought havoc on companies’ plans for growth. In the first year, 43% of businesses temporarily closed , something few could have anticipated.

In this article, we’ll explore why you need a business continuity plan template to help you stay on steady footing, even if the ground beneath you shakes.

Get the template

What is a business continuity plan template?

A business continuity plan (BCP) is a roadmap for long-term success that factors in common pitfalls and risks. A business continuity plan template ensures that you dot your Is and cross your Ts, and craft a reliable plan to handle unexpected events or disasters.

The template will include fields for filling in information on your current resources, recovery procedures when you face critical setbacks, and a list of personnel responsible for addressing such issues.

The primary purpose of business continuity management is to analyze the current status of your company and its state of preparedness for unexpected threats. With it, senior management can find any weak spots in the business and proactively identify solutions to problems that could hinder progress toward your goals. Of course, there are other reasons you’d benefit from this template.

Why use a business continuity plan template?

Reiterating on the above, the main function of the business continuity plans template is to provide a framework for addressing any problems that may arise in various departments and areas of the business.

Without a plan for dealing with roadblocks, your business’s growth can be stunted, or worse, screech to a halt. All it takes is a few missteps or misguided risks to steer your company off course. 90% of small businesses fail within a single year if they can’t resume full operations following an unexpected disaster.

Don’t confuse a BCP with a disaster recovery plan. A BCP doesn’t just outline what to do in case of emergencies, but it presents ideas for recovering full functionality within the business to minimize the impact on growth.

Take your company’s sensitive data as an example. Relying solely on backups to external servers or hard drives could be risky. In your BCP template, you’ll want to detail how you can protect and manage your data in the event of a breach or severe weather conditions. For instance, a hybrid approach, using both a cloud-based solution and a private server, could afford you extra data security and safety.

There were 3,950 confirmed data breaches in 2020 alone, which highlights the dangers of ignoring your data security. The faster you can get back on your feet and recover from cyberthreats or unforeseen events, the easier it’ll be to hold onto your cutting edge and stay a step ahead of the competition.

Those are the benefits in theory, but let’s take a look at specific cases where BCP templates can help.

What are examples of business continuity plan templates?

Depending on your needs, these business continuity templates can provide a little extra inspiration to get started.

Risk assessment template for business continuity

Use a risk assessment table to calculate whether various weather conditions or other events could impact your day-to-day operations. Your business continuity management team could use resources such as this to identify potential threats—however unlikely —to make sure that the company isn’t caught off guard.

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While nobody could have predicted the havoc wreaked by Hurricane Katrina, a rigorous risk assessment system ensures that you have most bases covered, including natural disasters.

Even if your headquarters is sheltered from severe weather conditions, there may be secondary offices or physical data servers in high-risk areas. As such, it’s important to factor in all of your infrastructure to avoid getting blindsided.

Alternate site evaluation template

If you have employees working from home or away from your primary place of work, you can use an alternate site evaluation table to evaluate the possible risks. Have your employees fill out a table like this one so that you have all the relevant contact information on your books in case of an emergency.

This information can help you better understand your employees’ work arrangements and troubleshoot any issues should they come up.

BCP committee table template

Use a simple BCP committee table to determine member’s roles and responsibilities. For each member, you can fill out contact information, along with a list of the main duties they are required to carry out.

This will make it easy for the committee members to coordinate for meetings and have a clear action plan for what to do next.

Want a template that lets you do all of this in one document? monday.com has just what the doctor ordered.

monday.com’s business continuity plan template

On the monday.com business continuity plan template, you’ll be able to enter data such as committee member contact details, disaster recovery action plans, and evacuation information.

The template covers all bases regarding potential threats you could encounter as you grow your business. With it, you’ll be able to keep all the information in a single place and enter it in an easy-to-digest way to share with your employees.

And that’s not all. With monday.com Work OS, your employees can easily share and collaborate on tables and forms, so you can ask for input regarding secondary places of work and contact information. Plus, managers can access this information from anywhere, allowing them to see crucial details at a glance for better preparation.

Part of business continuity planning is ensuring your sensitive data is secure, so you’ll appreciate that monday.com protects your information with permission-based access. Only those in the BCP committee will be privy to the plans unless you wish to grant access to other employees.

If you want to expand beyond the BCP and really detail how you’ll deal with potential disasters and risks, we’ve got a few templates for you.

Related templates from monday.com

Let’s take a look at a few templates that are related to a business continuity plan template.

Disaster recovery template

A Disaster Recovery Template falls under the scope of the business continuity plan committee. It’s just what it sounds like: a comprehensive plan for necessary actions if disaster strikes. More specifically, the plan should inform your approach for getting systems back online when they go down.

In this disaster recovery template, you can include everything from cyber-attacks and data breaches to worldwide pandemics or natural disasters. You can integrate these reports into your overall BCP to get a comprehensive overview of your recovery plans.

Operating functions template

An operating functions template gives you an idea of how you can cut costs in various processes and workflows. It can also inform how you can implement more sustainable business practices and initiatives.

Check out these different operations templates from monday.com that can be used with the BCP template to outline potential risks associated with new initiatives and suggested changes to work processes.

Program risk register

The Program Risk Register Template is for the early-stage process of identifying and evaluating potential risks to your business. It complements the business continuity plan template well — you can focus on valid, severe, likely risks in your BCP, and have a separate table for risks of all likelihoods and potential levels of impact.

FAQs about business continuity plan templates

How do you write a business continuity plan.

You can write a business continuity plan by first listing the various departments of your company and what risks or threats they might face. From there, you can assess the likelihood of these threats coming to fruition. Once you have an idea of the probability of the various threats to your company, you can prioritize them.

With a prioritized list, you can start with the most pressing threat and proactively brainstorm what actions you could take if it were to arise. The purpose of the BCP is to shield your company against anything that could hinder your progress. Coming up with potential solutions for addressing hypothetical problems can prepare you for real ones in the future.

What is a small business continuity plan?

A small business continuity plan is a document that details potential risks and threats to a small business. It’s well worth creating such a document as a small business owner, as it can save you from disaster as you strive to scale the company.

For small businesses, any hitch can prove disastrous. 38.8% of US-based small businesses were affected by supply chain issues in 2021, which, for some, would have impeded growth significantly. Over-reliance on foreign suppliers could be an example of an unnecessary risk that, without being addressed, could spell disaster for a small business.

With the business continuity plan in place, you can protect your business in its most vulnerable state of growth. The plan forces you to think laterally about the threats that could sink your business. That way, you can make necessary course corrections and increase your chances of long-term survival.

What is an example of a business continuity plan?

An example of a business continuity plan is to plan out how you’ll protect your app’s uptime in the event something happens to one data center: for example, running a clone in AWS you can always fall back on.

What are the 3 elements of business continuity?

The three most vital elements within business continuity are resilience, recovery, and contingency.

• Resilience: how you’ll make it as hard as possible for critical functions to fail.
• Recovery: how you’ll get back to normal operations if disaster strikes.
• Contingency: what you’ll do if plan A for recovery fails.
• Project risk management

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Business Continuity Planning

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.

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.

View on YouTube

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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• Business Continuity

How To Choose The Right Business Continuity KPIs

Kevin Holland

• July 5, 2024
• Reading Time: 8 minutes

Key Highlights

• Every Business continuity KPI plays a vital role in measuring and tracking the effectiveness of business continuity plans.
• Recovery Time Objective ( RTO ) and Recovery Point Objective ( RPO ) are two essential KPIs in business continuity planning.
• Business Impact Analysis ( BIA ) helps identify critical business functions and assess their potential impacts during disruptions.
• Evaluating crisis management effectiveness is crucial for continuous improvement in business continuity planning .
• Employee training and awareness are important KPIs in ensuring a resilient organization during disruptions.
• Selecting the right KPIs for your business involves aligning them with your business objectives.

Table of Contents

Introduction

There is an old saying that if you can’t measure something then you can’t improve it. This is particularly the case for business continuity. Using a set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) is essential for success with this important discipline. The challenge is selecting which individual business continuity KPI or set of KPIs is appropriate for your own organization. In this blog I’ll give you some ideas about which to consider, helping you on your journey to world class business continuity.

What is a business continuity KPI?

Before looking at what a business continuity KPI is, let’s first understand the concept and importance of both Business Continuity (BC) and Key Performance Indicators, the difference between KPIs and metrics, and how they can help with your business continuity initiative.

What is business continuity?

Let’s start by checking your understanding of what business continuity (BC) is. If you’re confident you already know enough about it, then skip the rest of this section. BC involves creating and testing plans to give you operational resilience during disruptive events, such as natural disasters like floods and fires, technology events including cyberattacks and IT failures, and human events such as sickness and malicious acts.

What is a KPI?

A KPI is a particular kind of metric. A Metric is a system for measuring something. For example, in an automobile the speedometer provides a metric that shows how fast you are going at a point in time. A key performance indicator provides much more, it is a measure that is used to track progress towards achieving a particular goal or objective.

Using our automobile example, for a delivery driver a KPI could measure how frequently you arrive on time. The thing to focus on are the words “Key”, “performance”, and “indicator”. KPIs help businesses set goals (targets), monitor goal achievement (milestones), identify areas for improvement, and track progress over time. Each business continuity KPI will measure the effectiveness of your BC plans against your objectives.

What are examples of metrics for business continuity?

There are two important metrics that are fundamental to BC, RTO and RPO:

What is a Recovery Time Objective?

The Recovery Time Objective (RTO) measures the maximum acceptable time during a disruption before an organization’s critical operations are impacted. It represents the time it takes to recover and restore essential functions, services, and systems to normal operation after an incident occurs. Monitoring RTO is crucial because it ensures timely recovery, minimizing the impact of disruptions on business operations.

What is a Recovery Point Objective?

The Recovery Point Objective (RPO) is another crucial metric in business continuity planning. It determines the maximum amount of data loss that an organization can tolerate during a disruption. RPO defines the point in time to which data must be recovered to resume normal operations without significant consequences. Monitoring RPO is essential for organizations to ensure that their backup and recovery processes are aligned with their data loss tolerance levels.

What are examples of business continuity KPI?

There are several examples of a business continuity KPI that successful organizations use to track how they are progressing with BC:

BC Plan progress

Metrics only tell part of the story. Tracking the progress of creating a robust business continuity plan is an important business continuity KPI. At very least you should be tracking percentage completion by business function for:

• Business impact analysis (BIA)
• BC plan creation
• BC plan updates
• BC tests and exercises
• Improvement action implementation

These individual items can be rolled up into a single KPI, for example by taking the statistical mean of the individual percentages.

Example table to track progress on creating business continuity plans:

BC Plan quality

Tracking progress is just part of the story. Your ability to survive disruption depends on the quality of your BC plans and their implementation. A KPI to measure the quality of your plans will help to avoid the situation where your plans look good on paper, but fail to protect your business when the inevitable disruption strikes.

For this important KPI, score each BC plan on a scale of 1-10 using criteria based on your own situation and experience from others. Criteria can include:

• Plan completeness KPI
• Issues found during plan testing
• Unmitigated risks
• Meeting RTO and RPO
• Training completion
• Employee BC awareness
• Successful plan invocations for real events

BC maturity and resilience

The maturity and resilience of your BC processes and approach can be measured using industry standards such as ISO 22301 as the basis. This includes evaluating a number of core factors against the needs of the organization and best practice for BC. Using business continuity KPI such as this will take you into the next league, and help to ensure that your BC program is sustained.

Business Impact Analysis

Business Impact Analysis is a crucial activity in business continuity planning. It identifies critical business functions and assesses the potential impact on them during disruptions. BIA evaluates financial, operational, reputational, and regulatory consequences to prioritize resources and recovery efforts effectively. It’s a good idea to have a KPI that measures the quality of your BIA activities.

Crisis management audits

Auditing and measuring the effectiveness of crisis management strategies is essential for continuous improvement in business continuity planning. This business continuity KPI evaluates how well an organization responds to a crisis by testing and assessing its crisis response plans, communication strategies, decision-making processes, and coordination efforts.

Scoring employee training and preparedness

Employees play a crucial role in maintaining a resilient organization during disruptions. A KPI for employee training and awareness can check that employees are prepared and capable of responding effectively to disruptions, evaluating the effectiveness of employee training programs, understanding of roles and responsibilities during disruptions, and overall awareness of business continuity practices.

Selecting the right business continuity dashboard for your organisation

Selecting the most appropriate KPIs for your organization is an important activity. It involves identifying metrics that align with your organization’s specific situation and goals. Here are some guidelines to consider when selecting KPIs:

• Align with business objectives: Choose KPIs that directly contribute to your organization’s overall goals and objectives. Ensure that they reflect the critical aspects of your business operations and measure what matters most.
• Consider industry and organizational needs : Take into account the unique characteristics of your industry and organization. Different sectors may have specific compliance requirements or distinct risks, so adapt your KPI selection accordingly.
• Involve stakeholders: Engage key stakeholders, including senior management, department heads, and subject matter experts, in the process of identifying KPIs. Their input can provide valuable insights into the specific areas that need to be measured for effective business continuity planning.

How can you each business continuity KPI with business objectives?

Aligning KPIs with business objectives will ensure that they accurately measure and reflect the success of your business continuity efforts. Here are some key points to consider:

• Identify critical business functions: Determine the key areas of your business that are most vital to its success and sustainability. These functions should be the focus of your KPIs, as they have the most significant impact on overall business performance.
• Define measurable goals: Define specific, measurable goals for each critical business function. These goals should be aligned with your overall business objectives and reflect the desired outcomes for each function.
• Select relevant KPIs: Choose KPIs that accurately measure the progress and success of each critical business function, to provide meaningful and actionable insights into the performance of your BC efforts.

Implementing business continuity KPIs

Implementing each business continuity KPI requires careful planning and execution. It includes identifying the most relevant metrics, establishing methods and tools for tracking and measuring them, and integrating them into business continuity plans. Here are some key steps to consider when implementing a business continuity KPI:

• Identifying relevant KPIs: Select the most relevant KPIs that align with your business objectives and reflect the critical aspects of your business operations.
• Establishing data collection methods: Decide how you will collect data related to each KPI. This could involve manual data entry, automated monitoring systems, or integration with existing software solutions.
• Regular review and analysis: Establish a schedule for reviewing and analyzing the collected data regularly. This allows you to identify trends, patterns, or areas of improvement in your business continuity efforts.

Tools and methods for tracking business continuity KPIs

Effective tracking will help you gain valuable insights into the performance of your BC program. This involves using tools and methods that provide visibility into the relevant metrics, facilitating data-driven decision-making. Here are some examples:

Integrating business continuity KPIs into business continuity plans

Integrating each business continuity KPI into business continuity plans is essential for aligning performance metrics with recovery efforts. By integrating KPIs, organizations can ensure that their business continuity plans are focused on the most critical aspects of their operations. Here are some key points to consider when integrating KPIs into business continuity plans:

• Define KPI targets: Set specific targets for each KPI that align with your organization’s objectives and desired outcomes.
• Incorporate KPI tracking: Include a section in your business continuity plans for tracking and monitoring KPIs. This ensures that KPIs are integrated into the overall recovery efforts.
• Align recovery strategies : Align your recovery strategies with the KPI targets to ensure that they contribute to the achievement of those targets.

Carefully select and manage Key Performance Indicators for Business Continuity to enhance your organization’s resilience. Understanding metrics like Recovery Time Objective (RTO), Recovery Point Objective (RPO), and Crisis Management Effectiveness is crucial for readiness. Align KPIs with business goals, use monitoring tools, and conduct regular assessments to strengthen your continuity plan. Employee education plays a vital role in achieving KPI objectives. Monitor and adjust KPIs based on performance data to improve your ability to handle disruptions effectively. Organizations like the Business Continuity Institute , a global membership association for BC professionals, can help you on your journey.

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