What is a business continuity plan?

A business continuity plan (BCP) is a collection of procedures that establishes protocols and creates prevention and recovery systems in the case of a cyber attack, natural disaster, or other business disruption. In other words, when the unexpected affects your business, a business continuity plan can help get everything back on track.

To do this, a business continuity plan must include the following traits:

• Comprehensiveness
  For your business continuity plan to be effective, it needs to be able to cover all contingencies. This may be a difficult prospect, given that unexpected threats are, by definition, unexpected. As a rule of thumb, you’ll want your plan to cover such possibilities as utility outages, natural disasters, cyber attacks, human errors, and local and global pandemics. Prioritizing these risks according to potential impact and likelihood of occurrence to ensure that your plan covers the right areas. Additionally, consider creating backup plans in the event that your primary plans fail. Understand the factors at play and what could go wrong, and then plan accordingly. Business continuity plans may include crisis communications, crisis management, disaster recovery, employee communications.

• Practicality
  It’s worth mentioning that your business continuity plan isn’t worth much by itself; it needs to be something that you can actually implement when needed. Be realistic as you create your plans, and be sure to take into account the capabilities of your organization and your employees as well as the needs and communication channels for reaching your customers.

• Efficiency
  In an emergency situation, complexity may be the enemy. In times of high stress and in the event of infrastructure failure, it will be even more difficult than usual for your people to perform tasks. Try to keep your plans as clear and to the point as possible, so that those in charge can act on them quickly with the resources they have available.

• Adaptability
  Business continuity plans should be comprehensive, but they also need to allow room for adaptability. Disasters have a tendency to evolve unexpectedly, and there is not much chance of having a plan that addresses every possible emerging situation. Train your people to respond intelligently to emergency situations, and include constant monitoring in your plan so that you can pivot your approach at a moment’s notice.
  

If you feel like there have been more than the average number of disruptive events within the last few years, you may be right. Recent research suggests that outages which cause a significant disruption of service are becoming more severe, more costly, and longer duration.

With disruptions and outages on the rise, those businesses which are able to field an effective business continuity plan will have a clear competitive advantage over organizations that do not.

A business continuity plan will not prevent emergencies from occurring—an earthquake, a third-party data breach, or even a network hardware failure are all beyond the ability of a BCP to avert. What a business continuity plan can do, however, is prevent and minimize business disruption as a result of these emergencies.

An effective business continuity plan outlines the steps your organization will need to take to reduce the severity and length of disruptions. By including a thorough analysis of potential threats, a listing of off-site and on-site emergency contact information, and detailing strategies and responsibilities for each emergent event, your organization will have the direction it needs to mitigate potential damages.

Business continuity is a good idea for any business in any industry. But for some critical organizations, having a business continuity plan is mandated by law. Businesses within the government, financial, and healthcare sectors, for example, are held strictly accountable for the state of their operations and data in the event of a disruption. Other businesses in other industries may likewise be liable for damages as a result of failed business continuity.

A reliable business continuity plan will allow you to remain in operation even in the event of a potentially disruptive emergency.

Effectively handling emergency situations without a noticeable drop in services demonstrates the quality of your business, improving customer satisfaction in the process.

Customers rely on your business for many things -- their digital services, food, access to money or payments, healthcare, communication -- and your continuity enables their continuity. They are also more aware than ever of the need for reliable data security in the organizations they choose to do business with. When disruptions occur, they expect businesses to bounce back quickly. Effective business continuity demonstrates an organization’s commitment to serving its customers, regardless of what might be happening.

When employees understand the steps they need to take in the event of an emergency, they are more confident in their company’s leadership, and more willing to trust its decisions. Additionally, as employees are trained in effective business continuity, they become more skilled at resolving smaller, less-dire disruptions and emergencies and experience less stress under pressure.

Despite the obvious advantages, many organizations have little-to-no business continuity in place. As such, when disruptions occur and those organizations are left unable to function effectively, their customers will likely flock to the businesses that are able to weather the storm. In fact, in a study of gnarly 1,800 companies across a 25-year period, resilience in the face of emerging events accounts for approximately 30% of long-term performance (source: BCG Henderson Institute).

There are a number of business advantages associated with BCP, but make sure not to overlook the financial advantages. Financial losses as a result of a business disruption—including system failures, power loss, and data breaches—can have a significant negative impact on your organization; business continuity management helps prevent or lessen this risk.