Question 1

What is a Business Continuity Plan?

Accepted Answer

A “Business Continuity Plan” (BCP) is a documented plan that outlines the potential impact of a crisis and sets in place policies designed to help the organization recover. While disaster almost never gives us enough forewarning, a Business Continuity Plan is best created before a crisis and should always include the company’s key stakeholders. The primary goal of a BCP is to shield workers and assets for the duration of an emergency.

According to sites like Wikipedia this often involved analytical actives like assessing the likelihood of a particular crisis occurring - and its possible frequency determining its possible impact on your operations This kind of analysis should help you to identify which business functions are essential to day-to-day business operations.

Minimize the potential impact of crises Once you've identified the key risks your business faces, you need to protect your business functions against them.

Question 2

What constitutes an “emergency” regarding a Business Continuity Plan?

Accepted Answer

An emergency is any scenario where a business can no longer operate as usual. This may include a natural disaster like a fire, flood, or tornado, but may also include events like a power outage, bomb threat, compliance breach, active shooter, cyberattack, employee injury, or an interruption within the chain of command or supply chain. Every business needs to review their ability to respond to threats proactively, and prepare a BCP to ensure minimal disruption, and remain competitive following a threat.

Question 3

What is Crisis Management vs. Business Continuity?

Accepted Answer

During a crisis, customers and employees expect your organization to have a plan and be able to execute in a way that protects people and property. During a disaster, your organization will turn to the business continuity plan to maintain operations. Either way, the decision-making process for the management of the crisis or disaster is generally shouldered by the senior management team. What can be confusing is the overlapping activities for the crisis response and continuity of operations. It is good to begin any dialogue from the definition of a crisis and disaster. Therefore the first question to ask when the incident occurs, "Is this a crisis or a disaster?"

Question 4

What should a Business Continuity Plan include?

Accepted Answer

Business Continuity Plans are complicated and vary from company to company. You must tailor your efforts to best fit your organization’s requirements. When creating your plan it is always advisable to seek outside counsel, and input from various subject matter experts outside the organization. At Chesley Brown, we help guide clients through this process to ensure they make the best decisions based on objective information. Here are some of the most common things companies look for when building their BCP:

A Business Continuity Plan may include:

Protocols for coordinating with local emergency personnel
Detailed instructions of where to go during an emergency
Goals and objectives
Information on data backups and site backups
Key roles and responsibilities
List of tasks required to keep operations moving
Detailed list of your most critical assets
Plan maintenance protocols
Policy, purpose, and scope of plans
Risk mitigation plans

Question 5

Why do Business Continuity Plans matter?

Accepted Answer

Business Continuity Plans are an essential part of any business. Threats, disruptions, and failures will cause a loss in revenue and higher prices to eventually have an effect on growth. Businesses can not rely on insurance alone, as insurance frequently only covers a fraction of the cost associated with a disaster, not to mention reputational damage. It's essential to plan thoroughly to shield yourself from the impact of potential crises - from fire, flood or theft to IT system failure, restricted access to premises or illness of key staff.

During a crisis, your organization is expected to execute the crisis management plan and during a disaster, the business continuity plan. If, however, you've got a large quantity of consumers/personnel and a public facing set of services A Crisis Management Plan (CMP) is a fundamental part of your BCP.

A proactive plan benefits businesses in 3 ways:

The company is better prepared to handle a crisis.
The business can continue providing service following a disaster.
The business can maintain a better reputation, image and revenue stream.

Question 6

What's the difference between Emergency Preparedness and Business Continuity?

Accepted Answer

Emergency Preparedness and Business Continuity Emergency preparedness, business continuity, crisis response, emergency management: These and other related terms are often discussed as if they are synonyms that all refer to responding to and mitigating a crisis event.

It's important for organizations to understand the difference between emergency preparedness and business continuity to ensure that they are correctly accounting for each. Businesses that have both emergency preparedness and business continuity departments are already a step ahead, since these are distinct functions that can both make or break the success of a company. Be sure to give additional consideration to a Disaster Recovery Plan.

A Disaster Recovery Plan deals with the recovery procedures put in place for when a disaster strikes. A Disaster Recovery Plan documents the procedures, policies and actions that limit the disruption and the steps to be taken for recovery.

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