Editor's Note: Take a look at our featured best practice, Business Continuity Plan (BCP) Template (20-page Word document). A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is a plan to continue operations if a place of business is affected by different levels of disaster which can be localized short term disasters, to days long building wide problems, to a permanent loss of a building. Such a plan typically explains how the [read more]
Business Continuity Planning
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Business Continuity Planning (BCP), sometimes also called Business Continuity and Resiliency Planning (BCRP), helps a company continue operations under adverse conditions, such as a disaster striking and shutting down the company’s headquarters. It does this by identifying the core underlying processes of the organization that directly affect its bottom line and finding alternate or back-up processes in the event of disruption. The business continuity plan itself is exactly how it sounds — it’s a plan or roadmap for the business to follow when a situation occurs that threatens the continuity of business. Corporations begin emphasizing and developing internal BCP departments after the 9/11 terrorist attacks violently showed the reality of a major disaster affecting and possibly immediately ending businesses.
Any event that could impact operations is included, such as supply chain disruption, loss of or damage to critical infrastructure (power, machinery, IT systems). As such, risk management must be included as part of BCP effort.
Document internal key personnel and backups. These are people who fill positions without which your business absolutely cannot function – make the list as large as necessary, but as small as possible.
- Consider which job functions are critically necessary, every day. Think about who fills those positions when the primary job-holder is on vacation.
- Make a list of all those individuals with all contact information including business phone, home phone, cell phone, pager, business email, personal email, and any other possible way of contacting them in an emergency situation where normal communications might be unavailable.
Identify who can telecommute. Some people in your company might be perfectly capable of conducting business from a home office. Find out who can and who cannot.
- You might consider assuring that your critical staff (identified in Step 1) can all telecommute if necessary.
Document external contacts. If you have critical vendors or contractors, build a special contact list that includes a description of the company (or individual) and any other absolutely critical information about them including key personnel contact information.
- Include in your list people like attorneys, bankers, IT consultants…anyone that you might need to call to assist with various operational issues.
- Don’t forget utility companies, municipal and community offices (police, fire, water, hospitals) and the post office!
Document critical equipment. Personal computers often contain critical information (you do have off-site backups, don’t you?).
- Some businesses cannot function even for a few hours without a fax machine. Do you rely heavily on your copy machine? Do you have special printers you absolutely must have?
- Don’t forget software – that would often be considered critical equipment especially if it is specialized software or if it cannot be replaced.
Identify critical documents. Articles of incorporation and other legal papers, utility bills, banking information, critical HR documents, building lease papers, tax returns…you need to have everything available that would be necessary to start your business over again.
- Remember, you might be dealing with a total facility loss. Would you know when to pay the loan on your company vehicles? To whom do you send payment for your email services?
You may be interested in this set of Business Continuity Planning (BCP) & Disaster Recovery (DR) Templates. These templates were originally developed for a large, international enterprise with locations in multiple geographies.
Identify contingency equipment options. If your company uses trucks, and it is possible the trucks might be damaged in a building fire, where would you rent trucks? Where would you rent computers? Can you use a business service outlet for copies, fax, printing, and other critical functions?
Identify your contingency location. This is the place you will conduct business while your primary offices are unavailable.
- It could be a hotel – many of them have very well-equipped business facilities you can use. It might be one of your contractors’ offices, or your attorney’s office.
- Perhaps telecommuting for everyone is a viable option.
- If you do have an identified temporary location, include a map in your BCP. Wherever it is, make sure you have all the appropriate contact information (including people’s names).
Make a “How-to”. It should include step-by-step instructions on what to do, who should do it, and how.
- List each responsibility and write down the name of the person assigned to it. Also, do the reverse: For each person, list the responsibilities. That way, if you want to know who is supposed to call the insurance company, you can look up “Insurance.” And if you want to know what Joe Doe is doing, you can look under “Joe” for that information.
Put the information together! A BCP is useless if all the information is scattered about in different places. A BCP is a reference document – it should all be kept together in something like a 3-ring binder.
- Make plenty of copies and give one to each of your key personnel.
- Keep several extra copies at an off-site location, at home and/or in a safety-deposit box.
Communicate. Make sure everyone in your company knows the BCP.
- Hold mandatory training classes for each and every employee whether they are on the critical list or not. You do not want your non-critical staff driving through an ice storm to get to a building that has been damaged by fire then wondering what to do next.
Test the plan! You’ve put really good ideas down, accumulated all your information, identified contingency locations, listed your personnel, contacts and service companies, but can you pull it off?
- Pick a day and let everyone know what’s going to happen (including your customers, contractors and vendors); then on that morning, act as though your office building has been destroyed. Make the calls – go to the contingency site.
- One thing you will definitely learn in the test is that you haven’t gotten it all just exactly right. Don’t wait until disaster strikes to figure out what you should do differently next time. Run the test.
- If you make any major changes, run it again a few months later. Even after you have a solid plan, you should test it annually.
Plan to change the plan. No matter how good your plan is, and no matter how smoothly your test runs, it is likely there will be events outside your plan. The hotel you plan to use for your contingency site is hosting a huge convention. You can’t get into the bank because the disaster happened on a banking holiday. The power is out in your house. The copy machine at the business services company is broken. Your IT consultant is on vacation.
Review and revise. Every time something changes, update all copies of your BCP.
- Never let it get out of date. An out-of-date plan can be worse than useless: it can make you feel safe when you are definitely not safe.
61-slide PowerPoint presentation
The disruption COVID-19 caused has made businesses more aware of the importance of business continuity planning (BCP) for effective disruption-related preparation, response and recovery.
Although the term "business continuity" is often used as a synonym for IT Disaster recovery [read more]
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About Charles Intrieri
Charles Intrieri is subject matter expert on Cost Reduction, Supply Chain, and 3rd Party Logistics. He is also an author on Flevy (view his documents materials). Managing his own consultancy for the past 25 years, Charles has helped dozens of clients achieve leaner and more efficient operations. You can connect with him here on LinkedIn or email him directly (cmiconsulting93@gmail.com). Charles also has a presentation Why Lean Fails in a Company? available for free download here.
