How Continuity Coach Creates a Business Continuity Plan
A Step-by-Step Guide to the Service
A good way to visualise a business continuity plan is to think of it as a framework, rather than a huge document that describes a detailed process to be followed. Real-life experience shows us that these gargantuan documents are of little use during a crisis and cumbersome to maintain. Those responsible for for managing incidents need information that is concise and can be accessed quickly.
This is the initial stage of business continuity plan development. Some call it a Business Impact Assessment (or "BIA"), others may refer to it as a risk assessment. What we decide to call it is less important than what this step actually does - it's the process of identifying the most important activities that need to be kept running to ensure staff safety, maintain customer goodwill and assure the survival of your organisation. Once you have identified what is important you can then start to consider what your overall capabilities are to meet these priorities, especially in terms of people, premises, IT and other resources.
A critical part of this stage of business continuity plan development is understanding the organisations overall ability to recovering IT systems, establishing alternative workplace arrangements and acquiring alternative equipment will determine whether or not your organisation has the intrinsic ability to recover from a major operational disruption. This stage draws in colleagues from the areas of the organisation that deliver these core capabilities and captures their feedback on what they can currently provide and whether this is sufficient to meet the organisations business continuity priorities. This part of the
Creating a Business Continuity Plan with Continuity Coach
Step 1 - Assessing Priorities & Capabilities
Creating a Business Continuity Plan with Continuity Coach
Step 2 - Developing Incident Response & Recovery Plans
This is where we get down into the "nitty gritty" of how the organisations activities are restored after certain types of disaster. Having established what can be done in terms of IT systems, alternative working arrangements and equipment, we get to the stage of defining actions plans for specific activities, deciding who does what where and when and who they need to communicate and collaborate with. These "plans" are working documents that describe key actions, team members, roles and relationships. .
Creating a Business Continuity Plan with Continuity Coach
Step 3 - Establish a Communications Framework
A comprehensive communications plan is an essential and critical part of any organisations business continuity plan. A communications plan needs to cover all parties that may be affected by an incident affecting your organisation. While risk assessments and response provide sound basis for recovering from an incident, the Communications Plan ensures everyone in the organisation is aware of "what's going on" while external communications preserves your organisation's reputation with customers and other third parties. This part of the plan includes the internal and external parties to be considered and communications channels to be used.
Creating a Business Continuity Plan With Continuity Coach
Step 4 - Plan Maintenance & Assurance
This final stage of business continuity plan development focusses on keeping your plan fit for for purpose. The business continuity plan template download includes a prepopulated management framework and assurance programme - which is already compliant with the ISO 22301 standard for business continuity management - to ensuring that your plan remains current and will stand up to any third party audit review
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