| Business Continuity Plan 1 |
| Written by Joseph Roux | |
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One of the most important things you can do for your business, no matter how large or small you are, is to develop a Business Continuity Plan. Here is a look at how to get started.
This is in many ways a type of insurance plan that allows you to look forward, and prepare for certain situations that would cause you to change the way you operate your business. These changes could be caused by icy road conditions, or it could be as simple as a gas leak. The point is - what would you do? How would your business continue to operate in these situations? Define Business Continuity PlanA Business Continuity Plan or BCP costs almost nothing to come up with. Basically you are talking about the time to sit down and think it all out, commit it to paper and then train those who would be involved in implementing the plan.A few years ago, the term was Disaster Recovery Plans. The two types of plans are very similar, however disaster planning is a more long term approach to recovering your business after a disaster strikes. While business continuity refers to keeping your business up and running for a couple hours or days if there is a small disruption. Often small businesses will combine the two plans. The ProcessThe first step is to define the people that keep your business running and what backup personnel you have. As you compile this list, determine which job functions are absolutely critical to keep your business going for a few hours, and what would be necessary in the long run. For instance, do you really need to focus on billing if your place of business is disrupted for a few hours or days, or can that wait until everything is functioning as normal? Yet if you lose everything in a facility, can you recreate that billing?Your business continuity plan should have different stages based on short term disruption, all the way to the building burnt to the ground and you have to start over. So list the critical job functions along with the primary person responsible for those jobs. What happens if that person is on vacation? Or they may not be in a position to assist. So who fills in for them when they are gone? See any holes? If you have to implement this plan, do you have one person responsible for everything? Now that you have the critical functions of your business defined, along with the person responsible and a back-up person designated, create a list with all their contact information. Include name, address, cell-phone, home phone, email and pager if they have one. One idea is to make small, laminated cards with all the critical people and numbers on them for the Business Continuity Plan Team to carry in their wallets. It doesn’t help if the numbers and information to implement the plan are at the office if you can’t get there. TelecommutingDo you have employees who can work from home? Figure out ahead of time which of your employees can and cannot do this. If they don’t have a computer at home and a either a cell phone or home phone, they probably aren’t good candidates for this.The list you made that detailed your critical staff and backup personnel need to have the resources to do this or you might need to reassess your list. Telecommuting simply means they have the means to make or take calls and look up information or handle the calls in a way that allows them to follow-up once things are back to normal. In a short term disruption of business, this may be calling customers to change appointments or let them know that you’ll be calling them back the next day. External ContactsAn external contact might be critical contractors or vendors that you deal with on a daily basis. Do they make daily deliveries to your business or come to your office on a scheduled basis? Build a separate contact list for those outside your business that you will need to contact if you’ve had to implement your business continuity plan. Don’t forget to include the numbers and information for things like utility companies, police, fire and hospitals and the post office.Critical Equipment and DocumentsMake a list that is specific to your business. Who has a personal computer with critical information on it? Do you back up the information on your work computers to an off-site source or is all this information held at your office or store? Do you need a fax machine to run your business? How about a copy machine or special printers? Don’t forget to include specialized software that can’t be replaced?If you lose your ability to go into your place of work for a few hours, days or weeks, what would you need in a secondary location to keep things going? It’s always a good idea to keep a copy of legal papers, HR documents, lease information and tax returns in a second location, but what about copies of orders or customer files? Who owes you money? Part of your planning process should be to consider what you would need if the office or store you are in now burnt to the ground. This is the extreme example, but the best plans include the option that you may have to start at a new location. |
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