Business Continuity Planning - Risk Management Tips

9/16/2020 (Permalink)

Do you have a Business Continuity Plan in place?

Business continuity planning is the process of developing a practical guide for how your business will recover or restore critical business activities within a given timeframe after a crisis or storm damage in Hot Springs, AR.

The resulting plan is called a business continuity plan or BCP. When developing your BCP, you should include actions to rehearse, maintain, and review your plan to make sure it meets the needs of your company over time.

Business Impact Analysis
Your business impact analysis identifies the following:

• The effect of different external and internal impacts upon the various parts of your business in times of crisis
• The time that your business can survive without undertaking critical activities
• The tasks that will be required to manage the initial phase of an incident and the individuals responsible for each task

Types of Plans
Depending on the size and nature of your business, and the business planning specialists, you may choose to have separate risk management, business impact analysis, response, and recovery plans. For a small business, a single business continuity plan that includes all the above elements may be enough. Depending on the type of incident you are dealing with, your planning stages may overlap. For example, recovery activities after flooding has occurred should start during the response phase.

Communications Section
The communications section guides all internal and external communications related to the incident response. Contact lists provide easy access to all contact numbers that might be needed in a crisis, including team members, emergency personnel staff, suppliers and key customers.

Plan Activation
The plan activation section is a clear statement of the circumstances when your continuity plan should be invoked and the list of personnel authorized to do so. It also sets out the process for mobilizing and standing down the relevant teams.

The BCP outlines the overall critical business operations restoration strategy, recovery of lost property, and resumption normal operations. It should also specify the ideal recovery timeframe to minimize serious business losses if flooding occurs.