Downtime and disaster strike when we least expect it. The good news, however, is that there are steps you can take to prepare for the worst. That's where business continuity planning comes in. Business continuity plans allow businesses, in case of business disruption, to recover quickly.
In this article, we'll go over 6 essential components every Business Continuity Plan should include—plus 3 bonus items for extra resilience. We'll also look at 9 tips to prevent your business from becoming one of the 25% of SMBs that fail to reopen after a disaster.
What a Business Continuity Plan Is
A business continuity plan outlines how you plan on keeping your business operational if there's an unplanned event or business disruption to your usual services.
The business continuity plan includes, for example, sensitive data recovery and backup procedures, strategies for resuming office productivity, and communication guidelines. Although a disaster recovery strategy is part of any good business continuity plan, it's only one part of a much larger strategy for keeping things moving during times of operational difficulty.
Why You Should Have a Business Continuity Plan
Downtime costs businesses money. It's estimated that the average infrastructure failure costs SMBs up to $100,000 an hour. Depending on how long the downtime persists, it may be impossible to recover. A business continuity plan is the only way to reduce the time you spend inactive after disasters or cyber attacks hit.
A business continuity plan is also essential for your brand's reputation and standing in the market. If you suffer too heavy losses then your reputation and image will be damaged significantly. This may result in the loss of clients and partners even after the recovery of your critical business functions.
If having a business continuity plan feels overwhelming or time-consuming, schedule a free consultation with our experts at ThinkSecureNet. We will help ensure your plan is professionally managed, leaving you free to focus on growing your business.
The Key Benefits of a Business Continuity Plan
There are many benefits to having a business continuity plan. We will go over some of the key benefits and discuss how they can help increase the overall resistance and sustainability of your business.
Minimize Operational Downtime
Operational downtime can be detrimental to any business and can cause significant loss in revenue and clients. That is why, it's essential to adequately prepare and have a preplanned business continuity plan to be able to get back to full operational capacity as soon as possible.
A quick business recovery will reduce the impact that the unexpected interruption has caused and will maintain the flow of work for everyone. Additionally, it will save you a lot of money and will allow you to maintain business operations without too many fluctuations.
Increased Trust and Reliability
Having a business continuity plan can help your business improve its brand reliability both for clients and stakeholders. The ability to get back on your feet in a short period of time after a disaster or other disruption can significantly affect how your business is perceived. You will gain customer confidence which is essential for any business
Suppose you are able to show that you are a reliable business to work with or to be a client of. In that case, this will solidify your reputation in the market, turning a disaster into increased chances of opportunity.
Competitive Advantage
Being well-prepared for the unexpected and recovering the critical functions of your business quickly will give you a unique opportunity to get ahead of your competitors. By the time your competitors get around the issue, many of their clients will jump ship and you'll gain new customers. This is a unique opportunity window for any business to show its stability and attract new clients.
Enhance Employee Motivation
Managing to get through uncertain times in a professional, preplanned, and calm way, will also improve employee morale. They will feel safe knowing that they work for a reliable and trustworthy business that knows how to navigate turbulent times. There is nothing better for your business than happy and satisfied employees who trust the company's emergency response capabilities.
So if you haven't thought of this before, it's time to create a solid business continuity plan.
9 Things to Include in Your Business Continuity Plan
Now, what should a business continuity plan include and how can you have a better disaster recovery plan? We'll try to answer these questions in this section, listing the essential components of any business continuity planning process.
1. Planning Team
One of the most important components of any business continuity planning process is putting together the right team who will be responsible if anything goes wrong. The business continuity team needs to include key personnel from different departments and senior management.
Having a team of professionals comprised of key employees who are responsible for business continuity planning is essential for an efficient and organized response. Naturally, this team would also have a team leader who would be in charge of the business continuity plan and would be familiar with all aspects of the organization's operations.
2. Key Contacts
You must have clear points of contact for your employees in the event of a disaster. This means appointing someone to oversee the business continuity plan and providing their contact details to every team member. You should also have a contingency plan in case your overseer is unreachable.
3. Communication Guidelines
Know how you'll communicate with staff, suppliers, and customers if the systems go down. Ensure you have a secondary line of communication in place to reach people and communicate vital messages.
At ThinkSecureNet we can help implement backup communication solutions to keep your team and stakeholders connected during a crisis.
4. Threat and Risk Analysis
Do a business impact analysis to understand the threats that could affect your business, whether this is a natural disaster, major cybersecurity event, or employee error, and rank these threats based on:
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How likely they are to occur
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The impact they could have on your business operations
Understanding the threat you're dealing with, and its possible ramifications, tells you how to respond should the need arise. Doing possible business impact analysis regularly will ensure that you're always up-to-date on the state of your overall business resilience.
5. Recovery Phases
Understand what your critical business operations are, and prioritize getting them up and running again. This should be stage one of your recovery. For this stage to be smooth, it would be wise to use backup sites for critical data. Implement your system recovery in phases to reduce the risk of error, system malfunction, and miscommunication.
6. Disaster Planning
Every effective business continuity plan needs a disaster recovery plan for handling natural disasters, such as hurricanes or storm damage. Be aware of how likely it is that a natural disaster will affect your business and plan accordingly. You should also be aware of what you'll do if, for example, a plumbing disaster floods the entire office and makes it uninhabitable. Disaster recovery planning might seem a complicated process but it'll be rewarding if things come down to it.
Bonus: 3 Additional Strategies to Strengthen Your Plan
Here are additional strategies to elevate your business continuity plan, ensuring you stay resilient and prepared for even the most unexpected disruptions. These bonus tips provide extra layers of protection and adaptability for your business.
7. Suppliers and Merchants
Have a means of contacting your utility suppliers, merchants, landlords, and IT service providers should the systems fail. Knowing how you'll contact these individuals in advance reduces the stress associated with disaster recovery.
8. Employee Training
To ensure that your entire staff is ready to face unexpected business interruptions, it's wise to do company-wide training, educating employees on how to recognize threats and not fall for various cyberattacks. It'll also ensure that your employees know who to turn to if they detect anything suspicious and potentially harmful.
9. Have a Plan B
No matter how prepared you are, it's always worth having a second course of action for business continuity that you can turn to if plan A fails for some reason. Without a plan B, you might find yourself lost amidst chaos where your initial business continuity plan didn't work out and you are left with no backups. This is why, using proactive strategies and having a backup strategy will help you stay ahead of things.
However, crafting a detailed and effective plan can be challenging. Our managed services take the burden off your shoulders, offering end-to-end solutions for business continuity planning and management.
How to Create a Business Continuity Plan
Creating a solid BCP requires careful planning and collaboration. Follow these steps:
Step 1: Identify Critical Business Functions
Determine which functions and operations are essential for keeping your business running. These might include IT systems, supply chain logistics, or customer service.
Step 2: Conduct a Risk Assessment
Analyze potential threats and their impact on your business. Use a risk matrix to rank risks by severity and likelihood, which helps prioritize response strategies.
Step 3: Assemble a Planning Team
Form a cross-functional team to oversee the plan’s development and execution. Include representatives from IT, HR, operations, and senior management.
If your internal resources are stretched, we can supplement your team with experienced professionals to ensure no detail is overlooked.
Step 4: Develop Response Strategies
Outline how your business will respond to various scenarios. Address communication, data recovery, relocation, and supply chain continuity.
Step 5: Test and Update the Plan
Regularly test your plan through simulated drills or tabletop exercises. Gather feedback to identify gaps and refine strategies. Continuously update the plan to account for new risks and changes in your business.
Keep Secure Your Business With Us
As you can see, your business continuity plan is critical to keeping your company operational and your data secure if disaster strikes. By including these 9 things in your business continuity plan, you'll reduce the chance of your business becoming another unfortunate statistic.
On the other hand, if you want to leave this complicated and nuanced process to professionals, you can turn to ThinkSecureNet. ThinkSecureNet will take away the burden of planning and will take care of creating a business continuity plan and managing it for your business. This will allow you to focus on other aspects of your business, while business continuity planning is being taken care of by ThinkSecureNet.
For more information on our services, contact us today.
FAQ: Business Continuity Planning
What should a business continuity plan contain?
A business continuity plan should cover: assessing critical functions and preparing resources, prioritizing risks based on impact and risk tolerance, outlining strategies to protect vital components, testing these strategies across functions with metrics, and using dashboards to monitor and update the plan.
What should a BCM plan include?
BCM(Business Continuity Management) plan includes Emergency Response, Crisis Management, Disaster Recovery, Risk Management, Business Impact Analysis, Resilience and Reputation Management.
What are the 5 components of a business continuity plan?
The 5 components of business continuity planning are; Risk and Impact Assessment, Recovery Planning, Team Roles and Responsibilities, Communication Protocols, Ongoing Testing, and Training.
What are the 4 Ps of business continuity?
The 4 Ps of a business continuity plan include People, Processes, Premises, and Providers. It provides a unique framework of business resistance in the face of unforeseen events. This framework suggests the action order that any business continuity plan should include.
The four key areas suggest prioritizing employee safety and well-being with effective training and planning; protecting critical processes with redundancy measures and adaptable workflows; assessing, and securing physical premises against potential threats; and managing external providers by diversifying resources and maintaining clear communication.
