Simple Yet Effective Business Continuity Plans (BCP) For SMEs

Risk Management is one of the most important steps that all businesses must undertake to ensure the smooth and efficient working of the day-to-day operations of their organization. A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) ensures that your assets are protected from any unforeseen situation that may disrupt the operations of the company. In such situations, the BCP would turn into a disaster recovery plan that helps your organization to withstand the turbulence.

What is a Business Continuity Plan (BCP)?

A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) can be understood as a document or a contingency plan that outlines the business continuity strategy which an organization must follow during the face of an uncertain situation. The plan enables a company to take quick and efficient measures so as to ensure uninterrupted business operations during the uncertainties.

Business Continuity Training programs help the SMEs devise Business Continuity Strategy to deal effectively with the recovery of systems, operations, and services. With these programs, organizations would be able to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the existing system and based on that they would be able to make the decisions about the recovery priorities and business continuity strategies.

Steps of Business Continuity Plan (BCP)

The development of a Business Continuity Plan must follow a certain set of steps and procedures to ensure the effectiveness of the plan during the disaster. Below are the list of steps that a Business Continuity Plan must follow. The steps include:

• Risk Assessment: Risk Assessment involves the identification of the potential loss or threats that a business may adhere to during the disaster.
• Identify each function and its importance: Once the risks are identified, the next step is to identify the severity of the risk involved. This is then mapped with the functions and their importance that would be interrupted when a business faces the potential threat.
• Develop the plan: Once you have a complete picture of the background, a plan of action is developed which would include the checklist of what needs to be done whenever a business faces the risk.
• Implement and Training: Implement and Training phase involves the implementation of the business continuity training so as to recover effectively from the loss of specific business functions. This makes sure that effective emergency plans are in place.
• Testing and Exercising: Testing and Exercising must be done in a continuous manner. As the personnel changes, the new ones need to be properly trained so that they can handle the emergency situation effectively. 

BCP does not necessarily need a high investment cost

Setting up a Business Continuity Plan (BCP) does not necessarily involve a high investment cost. Rather, BCP is a cost-effective measure to protect your organization from hazardous situations in the face of an emergency. A threat, if incurred in a business, may lead to the increased cost of operations followed by the diminishing profit margins. A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) acts as a cushion that protects the business from the rising cost of operations and it helps to safeguard the profit during the time of emergency.

For example, setting up a VPN Connection to secure the connection between a specific group of personnel in an organization so that this group of personnel is able to work from anywhere as long as there is internet connection. This will secure the connection the public and ensure the maintenance of privacy and security over the network.

Another example of a Business Continuity Plan involves subscribing to cloud strorage and storing important data in the cloud away from your physical office. In times of need, a secure connection is established and data can be pulled from cloud to resume business operations.

Have a Business Continuity Plan Today

A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is a simple yet effective risk management solution for SMEs and other organizations. This would ensure that your business is protected during the face of catastrophic situations. The steps for the development of a Business Continuity Plan (BCP) if followed in a proper way, would lead to long-term viability to your business.