Achieving Business Continuity

Review the plans that are currently in place, if any, and prioritise the order of criticality of services. Start the review with the most critical services and work through all services that require a Business Continuity Plan.

If you have no existing plans start by listing in priority order key services. Prepare and document alternative arrangements and workarounds so that each of these priority services could continue in all circumstances including prolonged power failure, lack of access to office buildings, loss of key staff through accident or illness etc.

1st Identify the need to plan

• Identify all critical services and prioritise them
• Produce a list of all known risks
• Plot each identified risk on a graph of impact by likelihood using a 1-5 measurement
• Decide how much risk you can prevent or reduce and set the risk appetite for how much your business can take. Plan the remainder

2nd Prepare your plan

• Prepare a generic plan of actions to enable you to continue each of your priority services, which also details specific actions for different types of risk and different services

3rd Test your plan

• Discuss your plan with all relevant employees involved in key services and identify any training requirements
• Simulate a theoretical disaster and test your plan