What is Business Continuity Planning?
Business Continuity Planning (BCP) is a process that helps manage risks to the smooth running of an organisation or delivery of a service. It is an ongoing process that helps organisations anticipate, prepare for, prevent, respond to and recover from disruptions or a disaster. By analysing the processes, people and assets in your organisation you will have a plan for continuity that not only works during disasters but will also help you if staff are unavailable or on sick leave.
Why do I need a Business Continuity Plan?
Because it makes real business sense. Emergencies can disrupt businesses, affecting profits and operations - which can be bad for employees, shareholders, customers and communities. The Government's key advice to businesses is to ensure you have robust, flexible business continuity management that will ensure that the impact of any emergency on your business will be minimised,
and should help your business recover quickly and keep trading throughout the disruption.
A business continuity plan re-assures your staff, shareholders and clients that you are prepared
as a business for potential problems and will have the ability to trade through these difficulties.
Who should make a plan?
All organizations that have premises should consider making a plan in case an event should make the premises unusable.
I thought business continuity was just about IT?
For most organisations IT is such a key area that they concentrate on this when planning for a
disaster. However it is no good having an IT backup plan if you haven't decided where you are
going to trade from, informed your staff where it is and how to get there and also taken out
adequate insurance cover to meet all these additional expenses. The 123BCP system is about
looking at each department in your business and ensuring that it could continue "next day" in the
event of a disaster. We have linked up with insurers, IT experts and serviced office suppliers to
allow you to prepare a complete continuity plan, look at the costs and then take out insurance
cover to avoid you having to pay anything.
What if I do nothing?
Customers expect continuity of services, even in the most challenging of circumstances. They
expect you to be fully in control, and to be seen to be in control. If you are unprepared and fail
to deal effectively with business disruption or disaster, your reputation and your business could
be at risk.
How do I make a plan?
All aspects of continuity planning are included in the simple to use 123BCP software, it will help you:
- Choose alternative trading locations
- Manage all of your employee, customer and supplier information
- Put staff into groups to work on the plan
- Allocate tasks to staff in preparation for any disaster
- List all of your assets and work out a replacement value
- Prepare a cash flow that predicts costs and income should a disaster occur
- Get insurance cover for all assets, equipment and continuity costs
- Pre-book the replacement computer equipment you might need
- Print a full plan for every member of staff
- Put your data on a website so that it is always available to your organisation
By producing a plan and getting suitable insurance cover you can ensure that you will be back in business straightaway and with any additional costs being met by your insurer.
You don't have to be an expert in business continuity to use 123BCP as the software will take you through each stage in easy to follow steps.