Introduction
A Business Continuity Plan is the least expensive insurance any company can have, especially for small companies, as it costs virtually nothing to produce. It details how employees will stay in touch and keep doing their jobs in the event of a disaster or emergency, such as a fire at the office. However, many companies never take the time to develop such a plan as statistics.
A Business Continuity Plan includes:
• Plans, measures and arrangements to ensure the continuous delivery of critical services and products, which permits the organization to recover its facility, data and assets.
• Identification of necessary resources to support business continuity, including personnel, information, equipment, financial allocations, legal counsel, infrastructure protection and accommodations.
Function
A business continuity plan outlines the steps necessary for a company to operate in the wake of a sudden and severe change to market conditions. Continuity plans can address basic concerns, such as the chain of command in the event a company leader dies or becomes extremely ill. Likewise, continuity plans reveal backup strategies for drastic scenarios, such as labor disputes, patent lawsuits or distribution bottlenecks.
Elements Of Business Continuity Plan
The first step is to obtain the commitment of the management and all the stakeholders
towards the plan. They have to set down the objectives of the plan, its scope and the
policies. An example of a decision on scope would be whether the target is the entire
organization or just some divisions, or whether it is only the data processing, or all the
organization’s services. Management provides sponsorship in terms of finance and
manpower. They need to weigh potential business losses versus the annual cost of
creating and maintaining the Business Continuity Planning. For this, they will have to
find answers to questions such as how much it would cost or how much would be considered adequate....