A business continuity plan which is also known as BCP or BCRP is the plan that keeps the company’s operations going either everything is normal or there is a disaster or sabotage in the company working. No matter how great the employees of a company are and how effective it’s working in the past, there are always some chances that the company will encounter some possible threats in the future and to make sure that it goes right through those disasters without any effects on the operations and production, BCP is here to help out the company and its employees.
Why Business Continuity Planning is Important?
Along with human errors in the organization and companies, there are always possible chances of a natural disaster that can ruin the operations of a business and affect its progress or manufacturing. In order to keep the business going with the same amount of progress and operations, it is important for the owners and in charge of a business to define the possible threats of the future and to define solutions to face them.
Natural threats include; floods, tornados, and earthquakes whereas other disasters include accidents, possible sabotage, power failure, and cyber hacking in the company database. BCP makes sure that the company is ready to face any possible disaster or problem in the future and that there is a plan to solve the upcoming issues in the future.
Here is a preview of this Free Sample Business Continuity Plan Template created using MS Word,
Here are the steps in order to create a Business Continuity Plan:
1. Identify and enlist the Risks and Threats:
BCP is all about the future risks and threats that could harm the company or its working in any way so the first and most important step in order to create a business continuity plan is to identify the possible threats that the company might encounter in the future. It is not possible to always foresee the future situation very accurately but you can observe the past and analyze what kind of threats and failures you had over the past few years because there are possibilities that most of the time, the same threats repeat themselves.
2. Conduct a Business Impact Analysis:
This mainly includes the people i.e. clients, suppliers, customers, stakeholders, partners, and competitors in the market that could harm the business and its working in any way. By analyzing all of the above, you make sure that you know where the market is going and what will be trends in the upcoming future so that you can prepare your company for those changes.
3. Enlist the Possible Solutions for the Threats:
Now that you have enlisted all the possible threats that could affect your business, now is the time to prepare solutions for those threats. This way, you can save a lot of time and consideration for the future when the company will actually be in jeopardy and you won’t have enough time to think about a solution.
4. Test the Solutions on a Regular Basis:
This is not that important but kind of essential to analyze the effectiveness of the solutions. By testing the solutions, you verify that when it’s time, these solutions will work and keep the company going through any kind of threat or disaster. This way if it doesn’t work in the testing, you can change the operations in time.
