Business Continuity
Business Continuity - Archer IRM
Archer Business Resiliency automates business continuity and disaster recovery planning and execution to protect your organization in the event of a crisis.
Technically, business continuity is defined as the processes and procedures taken to ensure that an organization can continue to operate or can be recovered within acceptable impact tolerances if a crisis occurs.
Business continuity deals with making and having business continuity and disaster recovery plans to deal with unforeseen difficult situations so that your business can go on with as little disruption as possible.
Regardless of what type of organization you run, as a good business person, you should know how to keep your business going under any circumstance that might arise.
Proactive and reactive plans have to be made to help your business avert any distractions or difficulties and to help the business bounce back quickly if any disturbance does occur.
Business continuity gives guidelines on what organizations have to do to maintain business functions and involves two specific areas; Business Continuity Management and Business Continuity Planning.
Business Continuity Management
These are advanced plans made by an organization to maintain business functions and keep operating after the occurrence of a disaster or an operational interruption.
It is a framework used to recognize the risks an organization is exposed to, both externally and internally.
Business continuity management ensures operational resiliency and sees that business continuity plans are always available and updated so that your organization can respond swiftly in the event of a crisis.
Business Continuity Planning (BCP)
A business continuity plan shows the details of procedures and processes an organization must adhere to in the event of any organizational interruptions or disasters like fire, flood, hurricane, etc. This plan contains organizational processes, assets, shareholders, business partners and so other important information paramount to the organization’s growth and development. When a business continuity plan is complete, it should be tested immediately to make sure it works as anticipated.
BCP is a great part of every organization’s risk management strategies because it looks at every possible risk that could fall on the company. Once these risks are identified, plans will then be put into place to make sure they can be managed should they come up anytime.
There are four steps needed to develop an effective business continuity plan:
Step 1: Conduct a Business Impact Analysis (BIA)
This is done to identify critical, time-sensitive organization processes and resources.
Step 2: Recovery
The organization must identify, document, and implement procedures to recover business functions and processes.
Step 3: Team Organization
A business continuity team made of experts in their fields is formed and this team comes up with a business continuity plan to manage every organizational disruption that might ensue.
Step 4: Training
The business continuity team undergoes training which involves tests and exercises to make sure the system is working fine and to reevaluate strategies and the BCP.
Components of a Good Business Continuity Plan
Every good business continuity plan must have these three components:
Business Resilience: A business can boost its resilience by building complex infrastructure and functions with possible disasters that can happen in mind. An organization has great business resilience if it can maintain its essential functions all the time with no interruption.
Contingency: This means that the plan has procedures handy in case of any unforeseen external circumstances and it includes commands and instruction to be executed by various members of the organization.
Recovery Time: Every good BCP should be able to restore all business functions to normal as soon as possible. Recovery time objectives are set for different functions according to their priorities so that the most important ones can be recovered first.
Business continuity is very important to the growth of an organization and one of the top business continuity solutions you can find is Archer. We are dedicated to helping organizations manage risks in this digital era, uniting stakeholders and transforming every risk into a reward. Archer provides a resiliency-driven approach to help your organization mature from reactive business and IT recovery objectives to a proactive posture that enables your team to significantly reduce the effects of disruptions to your business. With Archer, you can transform the efficiency of your resiliency team to protect your critical business operations.
FAQs
What is business continuity?
Business continuity is an organization’s ability to ensure that core business functions and operations are not completely affected by any unforeseen disaster that comes up.
What is the main purpose of business continuity?
The main purpose of business continuity is to protect an organization’s personnel and assets, making sure they are protected if any disaster strikes.
What are the steps for developing a good BCP?
Impact Analysis
Recovery
Organization
Training
What is the full meaning of BCP?
BCP stands for Business Continuity Planning. A business continuity plan shows the details of procedures and processes an organization must follow in the event of any disasters like fire, cybercrime, flood, etc.