Planning > What is a Business Continuity Plan?
What is a Business Continuity Plan?
Importantly it’s more than just a backup of your data or having a plan should your IT system fail. It’s a documented process which provides plans for each key business area; so that in the event of a crisis the information required to get the business running again is to hand.
Business Continuity is about anticipating events that could affect your business and planning for them by:
- Drawing up clearly defined accountability for managing a crisis
- Lists contingencies that enable key business activities to continue following a crisis
- Setting out emergency procedures to ensure safety of your employees in the event of a crisis
- Recording key information that your business will need to hand should a disaster strike, for example customer contact details; fixed asset register; register of IT software
- Clear responsibilities for maintaining and testing the plan
Examples of why a plan is required:
- A strategy for reducing the impact of the unavailability of the business’s normal worksite
- A strategy for maintaining core skills and knowledge within the workforce
- A strategy should a major supplier cease trading
- A strategy should the IT be unavailable to the business