Business Continuity Plans (BCPs)
If your office had an extended internet outage, or your IT systems went down completely, do you know how you’d react as a business?
A business continuity plan ensures your team know what to do in the event of a major disruption.
What does a business continuity plan (BCP) aim to do?
A BCP outlines the risks your business faces and how you’d overcome them if they were to occur. Depending on the nature of your business risks, a BCP will either outline the plan to fully recover your systems from a disaster, or guide your team on how to work through disruption until everything returns to normal.
Who should be involved in creating a BCP?
When deciding who will be working on your business’ BCP document, you should consider who will be actively involved in your recovery processes. Generally, this may include:
– Your IT team, to ensure your systems are safe and ready to use ASAP
– The senior management team, to provide overall direction and resource-allocation
– PR representatives, so they can help communicate with external stakeholders
– HR teams, so they can manage employee safety and internal communication
What should be covered in a BCP?
These are the most important points to cover in a BCP.
Risk Assessment
What are the biggest risks to your business? Think about general risks like power cuts and loss of internet, as well as risks more specific to your industry or location.
Business Impact Analysis
How much disruption could these risks cause? Think about the worst case scenario of how these occurrences could slow your business down. For example, could they make the office unsafe to work in? Would they take your IT systems down?
Recovery Strategies
How could you minimise the impact of these occurrences? Think about what plans and procedures you could put in place to minimise the impact of the previously mentioned ‘worst case scenarios’. For example, having a backup office available in case yours becomes unsafe.
Roles and Responsibilities
Who is responsible for each action taken during recovery? Such as getting your IT up and running, guiding the rest of the team, and communicating with stakeholders.
Communication Plan
How will you communicate with employees and external stakeholders? Any clients or business partners who may be affected by what’s going on need to be made aware so that they can control any impact this may have on their business.
Testing and Training
How are you going to test, and train employees on, your BCP? Ideally, once you have created your BCP, it should be tested to ensure nothing has been overlooked. It is also good practice to train new team members in the BCP so they have a general overview of your processes during an incident.
Need help creating a BCP for your business?
IT is a critical part of any business continuity plan, for this reason, our consultants would be happy to help you create a BCP. Give us a call on 01484 518899 if you’d like to discuss this with us.