Business Continuity Planning (BCP)

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Business Continuity Planning (BCP)

What is a BCP?

A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is a strategic framework of procedures and safeguards that enables an organization to continue critical operations and recover quickly after a disruption. It protects personnel and assets, minimizes downtime, and helps the business resume normal activity with as little interruption as possible.

Why BCP matters

Disruptions—natural disasters, cyber-attacks, terrorism, pandemics, power failures or other incidents—can cause financial loss, reputational damage and even business failure. Insurance alone often does not cover all losses or the revenue lost to competitors. A tested BCP reduces operational risk, shortens recovery time, and limits the spread of disruption across the organization.

Key benefits

  • Reduces downtime and financial losses
  • Protects employees, customers and critical assets
  • Improves organizational resilience and risk management
  • Ensures faster, more coordinated recovery efforts
  • Preserves customer confidence and competitive position

How to create a Business Continuity Plan

A robust BCP typically follows these core steps:

  1. Business Impact Analysis (BIA)
  2. Identify critical functions, processes and time-sensitive resources.
  3. Determine the financial and operational impact of interruptions.

  4. Establish recovery priorities and the recovery time objective (RTO) for each process.

  5. Recovery strategies

  6. Define actions and alternate workflows to restore critical functions.

  7. Identify backup sites, data backups, supplier alternatives and manual workarounds.

  8. Organization and governance

  9. Establish a continuity team with clear roles and responsibilities.

  10. Assign decision-making authority and contact lists for key personnel and stakeholders.

  11. Training and exercises

  12. Train continuity team members and inform all employees about relevant procedures.

  13. Run tabletop exercises and full-scale drills to validate response capabilities.

  14. Testing and maintenance

  15. Test the plan across multiple scenarios to find and fix weaknesses.

  16. Update the plan regularly to reflect organizational, technical or environmental changes.

  17. Practical checklist items

  18. Emergency contacts and escalation paths
  19. Locations of backup data and alternative facilities
  20. Required hardware, software and vendor contacts
  21. Communication templates for employees, customers and partners

For a BCP to be effective, awareness and participation must extend beyond the continuity team—every employee should understand their role during an incident.

Business Continuity Impact Analysis (BCIA)

A BCIA (or BIA) quantifies the effects of losing specific functions or processes and guides recovery prioritization. It typically records:
* Financial and operational impacts of loss
* Timeframes when impacts materialize
* The point by which each function must be restored (the RTO)

Government and emergency-management resources provide worksheets and templates to help managers capture this information reliably.

BCP vs. Disaster Recovery (DR)

  • Business Continuity Plan (BCP): organization-wide focus—people, facilities, supply chains, customer service and processes as well as IT. Aims to keep the whole business operating or quickly restore its critical functions.
  • Disaster Recovery (DR): subset focused on restoring IT systems, data and infrastructure after an incident. Typically IT-led and technology-centric.

Both are complementary: DR feeds into the broader BCP.

What a BCP should include

  • Risk identification and assessment
  • Prioritized list of critical functions and recovery objectives
  • Recovery procedures and alternative processes
  • Roles, responsibilities and communication plans
  • Training, testing schedules and maintenance procedures
  • Contact lists and inventories of key resources

Key takeaways

  • A BCP prepares an organization to respond to and recover from disruptions with minimal interruption.
  • Core components include business impact analysis, recovery strategies, organization, training and repeated testing.
  • BCPs cover the entire organization; disaster recovery focuses specifically on IT systems.
  • Regular exercises and plan updates are essential to ensure effectiveness.

Conclusion

Business continuity planning is an essential element of organizational risk management. By identifying risks, prioritizing critical functions and establishing tested recovery procedures, a BCP helps protect people, limit losses and maintain operations when incidents occur.