Next Destination: Business continuity plan

By Gabrielle Lamarche, CBCI, ACRP (special collaboration)

Like a travel diary documenting its preparations, thoughts, destinations and future challenges, a continuity plan enables an organization to learn about the risks to which it is exposed, the activities to prioritize and the strategies to employ to ensure that the impact is limited in the event of an incident.

Indeed, it’s undeniable that organizations are increasingly faced with a multitude of external and internal factors that can hamper the continuity of their operations, from climate change to geopolitical tensions, to the loss of access to their site. Whatever the size of an organization, it needs to prepare for the realities it faces, and think about how it will react to maintain the confidence of its stakeholders and limit material and financial losses. So, just like preparing for your next trip, a business continuity plan helps you to anticipate these impacts and maintain your organization’s activities.

In this article, some of the key steps and components involved in drawing up a business continuity plan will be presented, with the aim of raising awareness of the importance and purpose of this type of plan within your organization.

What is a business continuity plan?

The aim of a business continuity plan is to limit the consequences associated with the materialization of risks that could impact organizational priorities, by integrating continuity strategies. By drawing up a business continuity plan, we centralize information on the impacts to be anticipated, the organization’s priorities and the strategies to be deployed in the event of an incident.

What’s more, the business continuity plan is directly in line with the drive to increase organizational resilience. In fact, it’s important that the development and updating of the business continuity plan be aligned with the other resilience plans in place, such as the crisis management plan, emergency measures plans and IT disaster recovery plans. Also, as it is a direct reflection of the organization’s positioning within its external and internal environments, periodic updates are necessary to continue to reflect its reality.

What should I write on the front page of my travel diary?

In a process similar to planning a trip that seeks to choose your destination and establish the goals of your journey, it’s important to ask yourself certain questions about your readiness to develop a business continuity plan.

• Is my organization ready for a business shutdown?
• What would be the impact on the organization if all operations came to an abrupt halt tomorrow?
• What strategies would be needed to resume operations after such a situation?
• Which scenarios would have the greatest impact on my organization’s operations?

A risk analysis is an important step in identifying your strengths, vulnerabilities and blind spots. Performing a business impact analysis will also enable you to identify the critical processes essential to business continuity, and the resources needed to maintain them. This process gathers information on the organization’s internal and external dependencies, including key suppliers, IT systems and physical infrastructures. In this way, all these components will be crucial to the development of continuity strategies to optimize the recovery of your activities following an incident.

What are the essentials?

And if we continue with the premise that our business continuity plan is like a travel diary, what would we like to include in order to be prepared? Instead of recording our locations, excursions and travels, a business continuity plan documents our priorities, critical scenarios, tolerance levels and strategies for responding to an incident.

In other words, what does this information represent within a business continuity plan?

• The organization’s priorities; Most of this data was collected during the risk assessments and business impact analysis carried out prior to the implementation of the BCP. It is important to use this information as the starting point for determining the strategies to be deployed.
• Scenarios: What scenarios would we like to cover in our business continuity plan? One approach to consider is to anticipate the possible consequences rather than the totality of the risks, e.g. loss of access to physical sites, loss of technology and IT, loss of key suppliers, loss of skills of key employees. In the end, whatever the approach, the scenarios chosen must be adapted to your organization, and will be strongly linked to what has been identified in the preliminary risk analysis.
• Tolerance thresholds: This allows you to quantify the milestones for business recovery in the event of an incident. Often determined by periods of time, they are guides for prioritizing activities to be resumed and strategies to be deployed.
• Continuity strategies: What’s important about the strategies identified is that they represent your organization’s capabilities, established priorities and tolerance thresholds. Whether it’s establishing a business continuity site, deploying employees on teleworking or using a generator in the event of a power failure, all choices are possible as long as they fit and are adapted to your organization. Regular tests and exercises are a good way of ensuring that the strategies selected are realistic.

A final crucial component of a business continuity plan is the identification of roles and responsibilities. It is the people identified and their substitutes who will be crucial to the deployment of the plan and strategies, if any. Their consultation and participation are therefore essential to the drafting of the plan.

Conclusion

The ultimate destination for a business continuity plan is to increase organizational resilience, whatever the size of the organization. So, just as when preparing for a trip, it’s necessary to adapt the plan to reflect the organization’s reality, priorities and strategies, with the aim of increasing preparedness and anticipating the actions needed to maintain its activities.

If you would like to initiate a process of reflection within your organization to identify your risks, vulnerabilities, strengths and weaknesses, you are invited to complete the self-assessment form provided by Benoit Racette Services-conseils inc. You can also obtain personalized support for the development of your business continuity plan by contacting: [email protected].