Business Continuity Plan (BCP)

A business continuity plan (BCP) is a plan to help ensure that business processes can continue during a time of emergency or disaster. Such emergencies or disasters might include a fire or any other case where business is not able to occur under normal conditions. Businesses need to look at all such potential threats and devise BCPs to ensure continued operations should the threat become a reality.

A business continuity plan involves the following:

1. Analysis of organizational threats
2. A list of the primary tasks required to keep the organization operations flowing
3. Easily located management contact information
4. Explanation of where personnel should go if there is a disastrous event
5. Information on data backups and organization site backup
6. Collaboration among all facets of the organization
7. Buy-in from everyone in the organization

When developing a BCP all threats that could cease regular business should be determined. The next step is to determine the most significant tasks required to continue operations. Who are the necessary people and what are the tools and information needed to continue operation?

There should be a list of people in management and their contact information included in the BCP. These people should have each other’s contact information at home. If it is impossible to get to the office, they should be able to contact each other and make plans for resuming operations, at both home offices and offsite locations. This includes use of data backup and disaster recovery plans.

Many people need to be involved in creating a BCP. The responsibility for creating a BCP should not fall on any one person alone.