Basic of Business Continuity Plan

A lesson learned from a major disruption that impacted livelihood and business, to an extend It brings about thoughts on how we can operate the business effectively, and inevitable, change management comes in later.

Getting start with BCP

What is a BCP?

In short BCP is a documented strategy that outlines how a company will continue to operate during and after a disruptive event or crisis.

The Goal

This Is to ensure that essential business functions can continue in the event of a disruption or disaster, that is minimising the impact on the business, employees, customers and other stakeholders.

The basic plan of BCP

A BCP typiclally includes the following elements or more depends on the industries, companies size and resources available.

1. Risk Assessment:  The possible happen…This involves identifying potential threats to the business, such as natural disasters, cyber-attracks, or supply chain disruptions.
2.  Business impact Analysis: Should it happened, how it will cripple the business operations. This involves assessing the potential impact of these threats on the businesses, including financial, operational, and reputational impacts
3. Recovery Strategies: How & what should be prioritised. This is interest and challenging part, we have to be realistic on recovery, do not aim for 100% recovery, instead we should set what is critical to recover in a given time with limited resources to get the critical part of business operation up and running. This involves identifying strategies for recovering critical business functions and operations in the event of a disruption, the backup systems, redundant infrastructure, or alternative work locations.
4. Plan Development: The Plan Outline. This involves developing a detailed plan that outlines the steps to be taken in the event of a disruption or disaster, including communication protocols, employee safety procedures, and recovery procedures. This set the map of tasks, roles and responsibilities.
5. Testing and Training : Make it work! This involves testing the BCP to ensure that it able to activate with a given timeline, effective and training employees on their roles and responsibilities in the event of a disruption of disaster. 
6. Annual BCP run: This involves Setting up an annual BCP test run and review the result. It is important to ensure is able to kickstart based on planned, all procedures and machines are up to date for the respond.

Having a well-designed and tested Business Continuity Plan can help businesses minimise the impact of a crisis and ensure that they are able to continues operating and serving their customers during and after a disruptive event.