Business Planning

Why Business Continuity Planning Is Essential For Your Company?

Soumava Goswami

Business Planning September, 09 2023

When crises happen in business, it is quite common to panic and make wrong decisions by remaining unprepared. Crises can happen anytime, and you must not start every day with the worst that can happen. However, you must stay prepared for anything to happen. You can do this with the help of a useful business continuity planning structure in place. This is because, if you do not stay prepared for the crises, it can cost your company a lot.

In this article, you will learn some general details about business continuity planning. Apart from that, you will learn the importance of having such a planning structure in place. Furthermore, we will also discuss some of the major benefits of business continuity planning, which you must be aware of. Finally, we will share with you the steps you can follow to implement business continuity planning.

What Is Business Continuity Planning?

Business continuity planning is essential for a company as it helps in creating a prevention and recovery from the various risks and threats that can potentially affect the company. Having the plan will ensure that the personnel and assets of the company are protected.

Protecting them will enable the company to start functioning by recovering quickly after a disaster situation. Business continuity planning is also essential to recover from situations like cyber-attacks where the company’s data gets compromised.

Why Is Business Continuity Planning Important?

According to TechTarget.com,

“The plan should enable the organization to keep running at least at a minimal level during a crisis. Business continuity helps the organization maintain resiliency in responding quickly to an interruption. Strong business continuity saves money, time and company reputation. An extended outage risks financial, personal and reputational loss.”

With the help of the business continuity plan, you are making the company look after itself. You are analyzing the potential areas for risks and gathering important information from those areas. You have to have full information about those areas which are helpful for disaster situations. Furthermore, having a business continuity plan is also important to comply with legal processes.

What Are The Benefits Of Business Continuity Planning?

According to Investopedia,

“Business continuity planning is typically meant to help a company continue operating in the event of major disasters such as fires. BCPs are different from a disaster recovery plan, which focuses on the recovery of a company’s IT system after a crisis.”

Basically, such a business continuity plan will help you to take stapes, including creating backups of projects, client information, and more. If something must happen to the company’s office, the satellite offices of the company will have access to all the essential information of the company.

However, a business continuity plan does not work if a large population in the company is affected. It can happen at times of an outbreak of a disease. Despite that, having a business continuity plan in place will help you to improve the risk management processes of the company.

Business Continuity Planning – Steps To Follow

To make a great business continuity plan, it is important to have a management that oversees the plan.

According to Hubspot.com,

“This type of management determines the potential threats to a company and how each of these threats might impact business functions. Based on these findings, business continuity management is able to tweak the company’s continuity plan to address any new potential hazards.”

There are some steps you must follow to develop useful business continuity planning for your organization. Here are they:

Step 1:

Select your Business Continuity Team. Here, you must assemble a management team. Make sure the team is well-organized and detail-oriented. Make sure there is at least an executive manager, a program coordinator, and an information officer.

Step 2:

Define the objectives of the business continuity plan. To do that, you will need to know about what your end goal is. Furthermore, you must also have good information on the resources and budget based on your current projects.

Step 3:

Find the key players of your department and interview them. Make sure to talk with the executives as they have a bird’s eye view of the organization. Furthermore, make sure to interview the key team members of each department. This will help you to get an analysis that is useful and comprehensive.

Step 4:

Identify the essential functions of the business and the types of threats. By doing so, you will be able to find the major areas of your business that require the highest level of business continuity.

Step 5:

Assess the Risks in Every Area. Here, all you need to do is quantify the information that you have gathered from the interviews.

Step 6:

Conduct an Impact Analysis. Here, you will need to summarize your findings based on the costs and benefits to find out further what your priorities are.

Step 7:

Draft the business continuity plan. You must have already got ideas regarding what to include in the plan. Include all the requirements of the plan, followed by the procedure and end goals.

Step 8:

Test gaps in the plan. Once you have created your plan, you must immediately test it for any gaps. You can do it by communicating with those who are implementing the plan.

Step 9:

Revise your plan on the basis of findings. This will be on the basis of your findings in Step 8. Here, you will need to correct the flaws that you have found throughout the process.

Bottom Line

Business continuity planning is essential to hasten an organization’s recovery from a major risk leading to a threat or disaster. Basically, the company identifies all the risks that can affect the organization. The continuity plan puts in place various mechanisms and functions. With the help of these, the organization allows assets and personnel to minimize the company’s downtime.

In case of a disaster in the company, it is important to implement business continuity planning to provide cover for the disaster. Do you have any recommendations regarding how to implement business continuity planning? Share your views and ideas with us in the comments section below.

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Soumava Goswami

A passionate writer and an avid reader, Soumava is academically inclined and loves writing on topics requiring deep research. Having 3+ years of experience, Soumava also loves writing blogs in other domains, including digital marketing, business, technology, travel, and sports.

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Business Continuity Plan – What Is It, And How Does It Work?

Your business can come across a disaster or a host of negative situations for the business, which negatively affect the work processes of the business. In such cases, business continuity planning is one of the most necessary things to have. A business continuity plan will enable you to stay prepared for any kind of negative situation for the business. This shall further ensure that the business is able to work the same. In this article, you will learn about a business continuity plan and what are its major features. In addition to that, you will also learn how a business continuity plan works for a business. Furthermore, we will also discuss the major benefits of having a business continuity plan for your business. Finally, we will guide you with a step-by-step procedure on how to create such a plan for your business and stay prepared. What Is A Business Continuity Plan? According to Hubspot.com, “A business continuity plan outlines directions and procedures that your company will follow when faced with a crisis. These plans include business procedures, names of assets and partners, human resource functions, and other helpful information that can help maintain your brand's relationships with relevant stakeholders.” The major goal of a business continuity plan is to deal with the situations that disrupt the business. These disruptions can be both minor and full-blown threats. The plan allows you to plan for contingencies ahead of time. Such plans, as well as preparations according to those plans, can allow your business to continue operations even at times of high risk. Having a plan will help you to deal with the risks and either prevent or mitigate them. Some of the major disruptions that can affect the business include a natural disaster, a man-made disaster, a network breakdown, a cyber attack, and various other factors. These situations are large enough to disrupt organizations of any size. In such situations, a business continuity plan benefits the business by providing it with a procedure, processes, and tools. These will help the business to operate properly and recover within a short span of time. Read More: What Is a Franchise, And How Does It Work? – Examples, Benefits & More How Does A Business Continuity Plan Work? According to VMWare.com, “Business continuity planning is critical because without it, an organization faces downtime and other problems that could damage its financial health. In major disasters, a lack of a business continuity plan could cause irreparable financial harm that might ultimately force a company to permanently close.” In a business continuity plan, the business defines all the risks that can affect the operations of the organization. Hence, the plan becomes an important part of the risk management processes of the business. Some of the major risks include disasters, network breakdowns, cyberattacks, and more. Since threats and disruptions include a loss of revenue and higher costs for the business, it can lead to a loss of business profits. Furthermore, it is also not a great thing for your business to rely on insurance alone. Also, since the business does not cover all the necessary costs, as well as the ones associated with customers, a business continuity plan is necessary to deal with such situations. What Are The Benefits Of Having A Business Continuity Plan? The disasters in a business can be of any size and degree and can even be catastrophic for the business. Hence, a business continuity plan is one of the most essential things you can have for your business. The plan will help you to identify all the major risks that can affect the work processes of your company. According to Investopedia, “BCP is typically meant to help a company continue operating in the event of threats and disruptions. This could result in a loss of revenue and higher costs, which leads to a drop in profitability. And businesses can't rely on insurance alone because it doesn't cover all the costs and the customers who move to the competition.” The following are some of the major benefits of a business continuity plan: It helps to continue operating even in times of disaster. However, it is different from a disaster recovery plan. Helps in improving risk management of the company. It can stop disruptions in the organization from spreading. Helps to mitigate downtime of business technology and networks. It helps to save a lot of money, time, and resources. Business Continuity Plan - Steps To Create Here are some of the major steps you will need to follow if you want to create a business continuity plan: 1. Business Impact Analysis According to Investopedia, “An important part of developing a BCP is a business continuity impact analysis. It identifies the effects of disruption of business functions and processes. It also uses the information to make decisions about recovery priorities and strategies.” Here, your business managers will need to identify the functions of the plan as well as related resources for the business, especially the ones that are sensitive to time. 2. Recovery In this portion of the plan, the planner will need to identify the steps and implement them. This will include the steps for recovery as well. 3. Continuity Team You will need to create a continuity team here. The job of the team will be to devise a plan to manage the disruption of the plan. 4. Continuity Training You will need to train and test the continuity team here. The members of the team will also need to complete various exercises for the application of the plan. Read More: Intrapreneurship – Definition, Importance, Duties, And Responsibilities Summing Up Hope this article was helpful for you in getting a better idea of what a business continuity plan is and how it can allow your organization to recover quickly from disasters or, in the best cases, prevent them. The plan is a great option to keep your personnel prepared, save your assets, and ensure the business starts functioning fast. However, you will need to test your business continuity plan from time to time to ensure that there are no gaps in it. To find out gaps, you can create dummy situations or drills with your employees. Do you have any more recommendations on how to create the best business continuity plan? Share your ideas with us in the comments section below. Read Also: Entrepreneur : Who Coined The Term ‘Entrepreneur’? Entrepreneurship – Definition, Meaning, Scope, And More Importance Of Entrepreneurship: Types, Features & Benefits

Why Business Continuity Planning Is Essential For Your Company?

What Is Business Continuity Planning?

Why Is Business Continuity Planning Important?

What Are The Benefits Of Business Continuity Planning?