What is a Business Continuity Plan (BCP)?

A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is a detailed strategy and set of systems for ensuring an organization’s ability to prevent or rapidly recover from a significant disruption to its operations. The plan is essentially a playbook for how any type of organization—such as a private-sector company, a government agency or a school—will continue its day-to-day business during a disaster scenario or otherwise abnormal conditions.  

Examples of such disruptions include a fire, a major earthquake or other a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, a cyberattack and many other scenarios that could upend “business as usual.” When such events significantly disrupt an organization’s normal routines, it turns to its business continuity plan for instructions, processes and tools it needs to continue to operate or to quickly recover from downtime. 

Risks can be managed, but they can’t be eliminated. 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. 

There are many frameworks for creating an effective business continuity plan. Most of them cover three overlapping phases: 

• Analysis: In this phase, you identify and evaluate the various functions of your business and its operations. Then, you determine how those different functions will be affected by a disaster. This phase usually entails prioritizing different areas or departments in terms of how important they are to your operation, so that your plan ultimately ensures the continuity of your most critical functions first.
  
  Business continuity professionals often conduct a Business Impact Analysis (BIA) at the outset of developing a new plan. A BIA estimates the consequences of different disaster scenarios in terms of lost revenue and other business-specific metrics.
• Planning: Once an initial analysis is complete, the next phase entails all facets of developing an actual plan for continuing to operate in a disaster, or rapidly recovering from a disruption to normal operations. During the planning phase, organizations:  
• Develop protocols for potential needs such as a rapid relocation or shift to remote work. 
• Strategize temporary staffing changes or needs. 
• Implement IT disaster recovery tools to ensure continuity of critical systems. 

A key part of this phase is to name a continuity or crisis management team, comprised of executives and stakeholders who will lead the plan’s implementation if necessary. 

• Training and Testing: Even the most robust BCP must be put through regular testing to ensure it will work if needed. This includes educating employees on their roles and responsibilities in these scenarios, as well as conducting trials of various elements of the plan. An example would include a short-term rollout of a remote work scenario to identify issues and opportunities for optimization.