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Writing a Business Plan

While it may be tempting to put off, creating a business plan is an essential part of starting your own business. Plans and proposals should be put in a clear format making it easy for potential investors to understand. Because every company has a different goal and product or service to offer, there are business plan templates readily available to help you get on the right track. Many of these templates can be adapted for any company. In general, a business plan writing guide will recommend that the following sections be incorporated into your plan.
Executive Summary
The executive summary is the first section that business plans open with, but is often the last section to actually be written as it’s the most difficult to write. The executive summary is a summary of the overall plan that highlights the key points and gives the reader an idea of what lies ahead in the document. It should include areas such as the business opportunity, target market, marketing and sales strategy, competition, the summary of the financial plan, staff members and a summary of how the plan will be implemented. This section needs to be extremely clear, concise and engaging as you don’t want the reader to push your hard work aside.
Company Description
The company description follows the executive summary and should cover all the details about the company itself. For example, if you are writing a business plan for an internet café, you would want to include the name of the company, where the café would be located, who the main team members involved are and why, how large the company is, who the target market for the internet cafe is, what type of business structure the café is, such as LLC, sole proprietorship, partnership, or corporation, what the internet café business mission and vision statements are, and what the business’s short-term objectives are.
Services and Products
This is the exciting part of the plan where you get to explain what new and improved services or products you are offering. On top of describing the product or service itself, include in the plan what is currently in the market in this area, what problems there are in this area and how your product is the solution. For example, in a business plan for a food truck, perhaps there are numerous other food trucks in the area, but they are all fast –food style and unhealthy so, you want to introduce fast food that serves only organic and fresh ingredients every day. This is where you can also list your price points and future products or services you anticipate.
Market Analysis
The market analysis section will take time to write and research as a lot of effort and research need to go into it. Here is where you have the opportunity to describe what trends are showing up, what the growth rate in this sector looks like, what the current size of this industry is and who your target audience is. A cleaning business plan, for example, may include how this sector has been growing by 10% every year due to an increase in large businesses being built in the city.
Organization and Management
Marketing and sales are the part of the business plan where you explain how you will attract and retain clients. How are you reaching your target customers and what incentives do you offer that will keep them coming back? For a dry cleaner business plan, perhaps if they refer customers, they will get 10% off their next visit. In addition, you may want to explain what needs to be done in order for the business to be profitable. This is a great way of showing that you are conscious about what clear steps need to be taken to make a business successful.
Financial Projections & Appendix
The financial business plan section can be a tricky one to write as it is based on projections. Usually what is included is the short-term projection, which is a year broken down by month and should include start-up permits, equipment, and licenses that are required. This is followed by a three-year projection broken down by year and many often write a five-year projection, but this does not need to be included in the business plan.
The appendix is the last section and contains all the supporting documents and/or required material. This often includes resumes of those involved in the company, letters of reference, product pictures and credit histories. Keep in mind that your business plan is always in development and should be adjusted regularly as your business grows and changes.
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Your Guide to Writing a Business Plan

If you’re starting a new business, then you need an effective plan. Not only does this enable you to plan your company, but it also gives potential clients an insight into how your business works. A business plan is also vital if you want to attract investors or secure a loan from the bank. Drafting a business plan is a complex process, but it doesn’t have to be. This guide will ensure you create a definite plan to impress investors and clients.
When creating your business plan, there are some essential elements you must include. The Executive Summary provides a description of your business, and what you hope to achieve. People usually write at least one page, but leave their Executive Summary until last.
You’ll also need to detail what your business offers and define your target audience. This makes it easier for people to see whether your company has a chance of succeeding. The opportunity section is also an excellent way for you to see what competitors offer and how you can create a USP to stand out from the competition.
Appealing to Investors
Every business that wants growth and prosperity must ensure they promote themselves to potential investors. Business plans aren’t just about what the business is, but who is part of it too. Detail your current team members and explain what they bring to the company. Investors want to know they’re making a wise investment.
Your current finances and financial forecast are also essential aspects of your business plan. Look at your products, how much you’re selling them for and what kind of profit margin you expect to gain. It’s also vital you detail your outgoings and look at how various economic situations could affect your finances.
Writing a Winning Executive Summary
There are problems in every market, and a successful business solves that problem. If you can show how you’ll be able to offer solutions in your business plan, you’ll appeal to investors. Choose your target audience based on research and ensure you show your research. There are many ways to conduct market research including defining SOMs, SAMs and TAMs.
TAM stands for Total Available Market and comprises everyone you want your product to reach. Your Segmented Addressable Market (SAM) is a specific portion of the market you’ll target. This is important because it shows you’re able to direct your product at the right people and not just everyone. Your SOM (Share of the Market) is what you feel you’ll gain with your product.
How to Determine Pricing
Pricing your product is one of the most challenging things you’ll have to do. There are many things to consider, such as how much it’s worth and making sure you don’t charge unrealistically. Many new businesses believe undercharging is the best way to go, but doing this can undermine your company’s authority and cause fewer people to be interested in investing.
Market-based pricing involves looking at your competitors and evaluating their prices. Which company has the most customers? How does their pricing match others? These are all vital aspects you should consider. Remember, customers expect quality and a fair price, so make sure you combine the two.
Future Goals
Investors and banks want to know that you’ve considered what the future will hold for your company. When you write your business plan, be sure to take into account how you see the company growing, what you’ll do to ensure it thrives and that you understand the potential risks. Banks and investors want to know that you can build a business and are aware of the obstacles you’ll have to overcome.
Starting your own business doesn’t have to be difficult. If you ensure you produce a robust business plan, it can be an exciting process. Your business is part of your future, so start by outlining your goals and look forward to seeing results.
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Small Firm Business Continuity Plan Template
FINRA is providing a template as an optional tool to assist small introducing firms in fulfilling their obligations under FINRA Rule 4370 (Business Continuity Plans and Emergency Contact Information). The template is provided as a starting point for developing your firm’s plan. The obligation to develop a business continuity plan (BCP) is not a “one-size-fits-all” requirement, and you must tailor your plan to reflect the size and needs of your firm. Following the template does not guarantee compliance with or create any safe harbor with respect to FINRA rules, the federal securities laws or state laws, or other applicable federal or state regulatory requirements. The template does not create any new legal or regulatory obligations for firms or other entities.
October 26, 2021
- Updated to modernize and streamline the template, including changes to reflect increased use of remote offices and other alternative work arrangements.
May 12, 2010
- Updated rule citations to FINRA Rule 4370 (which carries over NASD Rules 3510 and 3520 without substantive change;
- Updated resources for business continuity planning; and
- The previously free-standing BCP Disclosure Statement is now a part of the template itself.
September 1, 2004
- Attachment added to provide a draft BCP disclosure statement, which is discussed under “Section XIII Disclosure of Business Continuity Plan” of the revised template.
OGC staff contacts: Jeanette Wingler and Sarah Kwak FINRA, OGC 1735 K Street, NW Washington, DC 20006 (202) 728-8000
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What Is A Business Continuity Plan? [+ Template & Examples]

Published: December 30, 2022
When a business crisis occurs, the last thing you want to do is panic.

The second-to-last thing you want to do is be unprepared. Crises typically arise without warning. While you shouldn't start every day expecting the worst, you should be relatively prepared for anything to happen.
A business crisis can cost your company a lot of money and ruin your reputation if you don't have a business continuity plan in place. Customers aren't very forgiving, especially when a crisis is influenced by accidents within the company or other preventable mistakes. If you want your company to be able to maintain its business continuity in the face of a crisis, then you'll need to come up with this type of plan to uphold its essential functions.

In this post, we'll explain what a business continuity plan is, give examples of scenarios that would require a business continuity plan, and provide a template that you can use to create a well-rounded program for your business.
Table of Contents:
What is a business continuity plan?
- Business Continuity Types
- Business Continuity vs Disaster Recovery
Business Continuity Plan Template
How to write a business continuity plan.
- Business Continuity Examples
A business continuity plan outlines directions and procedures that your company will follow when faced with a crisis. These plans include business procedures, names of assets and partners, human resource functions, and other helpful information that can help maintain your brand's relationships with relevant stakeholders. The goal of a business continuity plan is to handle anything from minor disruptions to full-blown threats.
For example, one crisis that your business may have to respond to is a severe snowstorm. Your team may be wondering, "If a snowstorm disrupted our supply chain, how would we resume business?" Planning contingencies ahead of time for situations like these can help your business stay afloat when you're faced with an unavoidable crisis.
When you think about business continuity in terms of the essential functions your business requires to operate, you can begin to mitigate and plan for specific risks within those functions.
Business Continuity Planning
Business continuity planning is the process of creating a plan to address a crisis. When writing out a business continuity plan, it's important to consider the variety of crises that could potentially affect the company and prepare a resolution for each.


Type: Workforce
Let's say that you have a rockstar on your leadership team. With extreme performance comes opportunity, and that rockstar may decide to leave your organization to pursue employment elsewhere.
Are there critical business functions that only this employee knows how to do, or do you have a cross-functional team who can take on the work should they decide to leave? How does this impact the workflow of the company, especially if it takes time to fill the role with someone else?
It all comes down to resource management and making sure that you can adapt to workforce changes in an agile way.
However, this is often easier said than done, and here are some examples of threats to your workforce continuity:
- Staffing issues
- The turnover of a critical employee
- Work stoppages and/or strikes
- Interpersonal conflict
- Not scaling and formalizing your systems and processes
The chart above outlines how you can help your company prepare for employee departures by having a successor plan in place ahead of time.
5. Business Continuity Plan Example for Workplace Emergencies

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12 Best Business Continuity Plan Templates

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Table of contents.
Business continuity managers and IT teams use a Business Continuity Plan (BCP) document to lay out plans for operating enterprises in the face of calamities like severe weather, forced building evacuations, power outages, etc. It identifies operational areas, resources, and recovery plans with assigned individuals that have a significant business effect.
To make your own, use the free business continuity plan template . You can never be too prepared for a crisis, so provide your business with the resources it needs to function well despite any setbacks.
When Should You Use a Business Continuity Plan Template?
Writing a business continuity strategy is critical to ensure your organization remains a going concern in spite of disruptions. You should have a strategy in place before responding to a calamity. Planning for business continuity is essential for a successful disaster recovery plan when dealing with emergency situations such as:
- Data breaches
- Internet or major IT outage due to an earthquake
- Equipment failure
- Injury, death, or sudden exit of key staff
Your organization needs a business continuity plan as much as a business strategy for normal operations.
These business continuity plan templates may offer a little more motivation to get going, depending on your requirements. If you’re having a problem writing an effective BCP, you can use any of the following templates depending on your business vertical.
12 Business Continuity Plan Templates
We are sharing with you 12 business continuity templates to reduce your time and effort in writing one. Here these are:
1. IT Service Business Continuity Plan Template
This IT Service Business Continuity Plan Template is suitable for IT companies such as software houses and design agencies. It highlights essential steps to undertake and ensure IT processes running in the event of a major disruption. Use the template to record all aspects of the continuity plan required for an IT team by identifying recovery objectives, teams, and tactics.
A good IT service business continuity plan template ensures that critical network systems remain operational despite outages. As we live in a digital-first world, businesses cannot survive without an IT service continuity plan template.
2. School Business Continuity Plan Template
With the aid of a useful template, have a solid backup plan for routine school activities and operations in case of emergency or crisis. You may prioritize responses, and operations, identify crucial recovery stages and create a restoration plan using the BCP template.
When a crisis happens, the most important asset that any school must safeguard against rapid loss is its critical data. We have seen how educational institutes have been a victim of ransomware attacks wiping out important data from different departments.
In any case, schools must be able to continue operating, regardless of any disruption. Schools may improve their degree of preparation by developing a business continuity plan.
3. Small Business Continuity Plan Template
With the help of this continuity plan for small businesses, you may list your goals for company recovery, select alternative site locations for operations, form recovery teams, and designate recovery duties to certain team members.
The provides a framework and guidance of operations for small businesses to restore their critical functions in the event of unforeseen events. This template includes work processes and lays out clear responsibilities of recovery teams and essential staff members. This is a FEMA-approved business continuity plan template that lists continuity plans to business disruptions due to three primary reasons:
- Fire, a sudden storm, or flooding
- Reduction in workforce
- System failure such as IT or electricity grid
In order for your organization to continue to grow, be sure you can maintain crucial procedures and reduce downtime.
4. SaaS Business Continuity Plan Template
To maintain productivity and efficiency throughout any unanticipated events or disruptions, use the SaaS (Software as a Business) business continuity plan template.
Unlike any other BCP, the SaaS continuity plan focuses more on systems and IT infrastructure than HR and other departments. That’s because SaaS businesses have a cloud-based business model such as selling subscriptions to a web or mobile app. Since these businesses sell software as a service, there is a recurring free every month or year.
In the event of a disaster, the critical functions of a SaaS business are equipment and systems. Some prominent SaaS are Google Drive and Dropbox.
The main emphasis is on getting the IT systems back online as soon as possible following a major disruption that could happen for loss of internet connectivity, floods, fire, or a cyberattack.
5. Healthcare Business Continuity Plan Template
Healthcare businesses like clinics and hospitals cannot afford disruption as it can be life-threatening for staff and patients.
These templates are great resources to assist healthcare facilities in developing their continuity plans and ensuring an effective and efficient return to normalcy.
With the help of a comprehensive business continuity plan template, you can identify risk strategies for certain business areas like clinical, finance, operations, and IT, specify disaster recovery plans and rank the most crucial processes for your medical practice.
To sustain productivity and ensure the safety of both patients and employees, healthcare institutions depend on essential processes and procedures. This template will help healthcare providers to identify all possible risks, design mitigation measures, and allocate duties to important team members. During the business disruption, this template will act as your Hospital Preparedness Program.
6. Law Firm Business Continuity Plan Template
A robust business continuity plan for legal firms involves more than data backups. Every law firm has clients with sensitive and confidential data. Ongoing cases and litigation support will not be possible when the law firm ceases to function.
Law firms can put in place corporate-wide procedures to equip your whole team for a variety of crises. Avoiding liabilities that can occur as a result of an obsolete or insufficient continuity plan is the goal.
7. Construction Company Business Continuity Plan Template
There are additional situations than major disasters that might endanger your business operations.
Your business’s essential machinery, tools, and technology might malfunction or get infected with dangerous ransomware. Or, essential employees may quit your business, leaving you rushing to hire extra staff since they lack the specialized abilities needed to finish the project.
These are common scenarios among construction companies. Construction equipment is quite costly and often upwards of millions of dollars. Without a backup disaster recovery plan, construction companies may not be able to complete their clients’ work on time.
This template is excellent for architects and construction firms regarding business continuity. It outlines in detail how the construction company will continue its normal business operations in different scenarios:
- Premises incidents including flood, fire, or storm
- Infrastructure incidents including power failure, loss of computers, and equipment, and internet outage
- Staff incidents such as sudden injury or death
8. Bank Business Continuity Plan Template
We live in an interconnected world where the provision of services such as finance and banking are now digital. Other than the developed nations, many emerging economies are now digitizing their financial institutions.
A Business Continuity Plan for financial institutions ensures swift recovery of operations, including services to customers, occurring as a result of natural disasters, power outages, cyberattacks, or human error.
The objectives of a BCP are to minimize financial loss, continue to serve customers, and mitigate disruptions on reputation, operations, liquidity, credit quality, and compliance with federal laws and regulations.
For financial institutions such as banks, a business continuity plan is an essential part of their strategic planning process. Governments around the world regulate financial institutions, and any disruptions can have far-reaching consequences for the company, its customers, and the economy as a whole.
As such, a financial institution’s business continuity plan must be comprehensive and well-researched. It should address everything from how the company will maintain customer confidence in the event of a major disruption to how it will keep critical systems up and running. Millions of people rely on mobile apps to transfer funds, pay bills and make online purchases.
9. Business Continuity Plan Template For Manufacturing Industry
Given the importance of manufacturing to the economy, any significant disruption to production can have severe consequences. A business continuity plan is therefore essential. We have already seen how supply chain bottlenecks have hampered growth and increased prices of essential items in most countries around the world.
The plan should outline how the business will continue to operate in the event of an interruption and should cover everything from alternative sources of raw materials to new manufacturing locations. You can use this template to minize the risks of disruptions and ensure that the business can continue to meet customer demand. In today’s global market, a business continuity plan is essential for any manufacturing company that wants to stay competitive.
Tech giants and enterprises always have business disaster recovery plans to ensure incidents such as supply chain bottlenecks, equipment failure, injury, or loss of human life have minimum impact on the business.
Critical events pose a threat to financial loss for individuals in the manufacturing sector because of unanticipated downtime, lower plant utilization rates, lost income, and even personnel who are in danger.
For the manufacturing sector, having a business continuity strategy is crucial to both mitigating a catastrophic event as it occurs and maintaining operations for networks dependent on the manufacturer’s company.
10. Cloud Computing Business Continuity Plan Template
By switching to cloud-based solutions, your company may become more productive, flexible, and lucrative. Planning is essential before taking this action, especially when considering business continuity in the cloud.
SaaS and IaaS models are, in many respects, victims of their own success since it is far too simple for companies to ignore their offerings. Cloud service companies compete in a very crowded industry. Because of this, suppliers promise to handle every facet of the system and data administration at a minimal cost.
It seems sensible that this might cause companies to overlook important components of their business continuity planning and assume their cloud provider would take care of them.
68 percent of businesses outline cloud misconfiguration as their top concern about the security of their infrastructure and data. You need the finest security procedures for dealing with cloud systems since 52 percent of firms ranked disasters.
A business continuity plan is to safeguard your application’s uptime in case anything happens to one of the data centers. You can always fall back on running a clone in AWS, for example.
11. Business Continuity Plan Template For Warehouse
Unfortunate occurrences like a global pandemic may result due to planned or unexpected reasons. Any effective Business Continuity Plan must include preparations for such a disaster.
Any crisis may have devastating repercussions on businesses with warehouses since they are an essential part of their infrastructure and necessary to provide customer service.
This is true with companies relying on rapid commerce or quick commerce, where the need to set up and manage multiple warehouses close to customers’ locations is vital.
By using this template, you can perform risk assessment, test out emergency situations and come up with viable solutions to ensure your warehouse continues operating as a normal business operation.
Planning entails collaborating with professionals and third parties to provide a suitable answer. To promote a speedy recovery from the crisis, a contingency plan should be well thought out.
With business continuity planning, you gain a thorough understanding of the security of your assets, operations, facilities, and personnel. Priority hazards and the assessment of the appropriate course of action in response to recognized risks are both included in the detection of warehouse contamination. Planning can proceed with the knowledge that an adequate response is already in place.
12. Business Continuity Plan Template for Oil and Gas Companies
For every hour of IT downtime, oil and gas companies lose $1 million. In the unfortunate event of power failure, it can go as high as $10 million in lost production and possible equipment damage.
A well-crafted plan will take into account all potential hazards and establish procedures for dealing with them, including evacuation plans, communication protocols, and backup power supplies.
Oil and gas companies attribute their success to insulating themselves from business interruption risk. With ongoing price fluctuation, companies strive to convert effective risk management into business opportunities. This in turn helps them in gaining a competitive edge in the global markets.
The price for not assessing risk is operational downtime. Profitability in the oil and gas field is proportional to large upfront investments alongside calculations of oil and gas prices, oil field output, and configuration of refineries. Oil and gas is a high-risk business and not having a BCP will lead to severe financial losses.
You can use this template to minimize your losses and ensure your oil and gas company remains a going concern despite major setbacks.
Write a Business Continuity Plan with Your New Template
It is imperative for companies to prepare business continuity plans with well-documented recovery strategies and a complete business impact analysis. There are more benefits than costs in implementing a BCP. The strategy challenges you to consider the potential dangers to your company from new angles. You can then adjust your route as appropriate, improving your prospects of long-term survival.
Analyzing your company’s existing situation and level of readiness for unforeseen dangers is the main goal of business continuity plan templates. With it, senior management may locate any areas of the company that need improvement and discover answers to issues that can impede your progress toward your objectives.
With a strong BCP template, minimize the impact of potential disruptions to your business. These templates serve as a guide to developing your own plans, which will vary depending on the type and size of the company.
Leverage any business continuity plan template that fits your requirements and makes your business successful.

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- Business Continuity Plan
Business Continuity Plan Template
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Use this Business Continuity Plan (BCP) template as an outline for your business continuity plan that will critically assess all aspects of the business and make sure the emergency procedures and equipment are adequate. This business continuity template can help with ISO 22301 compliance and allow business continuity managers and consultants to:
- Identify key business functions and components to be prioritized for restoration and recovery during an emergency.
- Add list of processes/equipment most at risk of disrupting business operations.
- Discuss roles and responsibilities of key personnel and gather confirmation (digital signatures).
Click on the Web or PDF report below to view the business continuity plan example.
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Updated 15 Feb 2023 , Published 1 Feb 2019
What is a Business Continuity Plan Template?
A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) template is a tool used by business continuity managers and IT teams to outline strategies for keeping businesses operational despite emergencies such as extreme weather events, building evacuations, power outages, etc. It identifies high business impact operational areas, assets, and recovery strategies with assigned personnel.
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Business continuity templates can be used in any industry for IT disaster recovery, continuity of customer-facing operations, and backup of transport & logistics operations.
In this article
7 elements of business continuity planning, components of a bcp template with examples, faqs about bcp, how do you write a business continuity plan with safetyculture (formerly iauditor), featured business continuity plan templates.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world, the economy took a massive hit. The need for a business continuity plan became more apparent to organizations. Business continuity planning enables businesses, small or large, to build a more resilient operation.
A Business Continuity Plan should include:
1. BCP Team
In the midst of a disaster or emergency, having a team or point person to go to will be essential. The BCP team will be responsible for planning and testing business continuity strategies. Background of each member in the BCP team can vary from organization managers or supervisors to specialists.
2. Business Impact Analysis
A business impact analysis (BIA) identifies, quantifies, and qualifies the impact of a loss, interruption, or disruption. Having a BIA will be essential in discovering risks that your business is exposed to and the potential disruptions that may occur.
3. Risk Mitigation
This element pertains to the strategies against the risks that were discovered during the BIA. Risk mitigation strategies may include putting up security and safety systems in the workplace, conducting preventive maintenance of vehicles, machines, equipment, or any asset vital to operations, and training of employees, among others.
4. Business Continuity Strategies
A good business continuity plan should establish strategies or alternate practices to keep the business running despite disruptions or disasters. An example of a continuity strategy that a lot of businesses had to implement during the pandemic was remote working or work-from-home. This enabled businesses to continue their operations and keep their employees safe from contracting COVID-19 in the workplace.
5. Business Continuity Plan
The business continuity plan is a combination of findings from the performed BIA and the recovery strategies established by the organization. A BCP plan typically includes 4 key components: scope & objectives, operations at risk, recovery strategy, and roles and responsibilities.
6. Training
All relevant personnel associated with the business continuity, disaster recovery, and incident response process should be trained according to the BCP plan that’s established and agreed upon.
In the testing phase, strategies and plans are being rehearsed or exercised to demonstrate its effectiveness. Testing the plan before rolling it out will enable the BCP team to discover potential flaws and fix them before they lead to damage or injury. It is recommended to review and test the plan periodically to ensure that all protocols and strategies are up-to-date.

Business Continuity Plan Template | Preview Sample PDF Report
BCP serves as a guide for organizations on creating an effective strategy for responding to potential business-disrupting events. Here are four key components of a BCP:
Scope & Objectives
States the purpose of the BCP, including specific business functions that should be prioritized for recovery during an emergency. This section should include examples of emergency events that would trigger the response of this BCP.
This BCP is to ensure the continuity of IT services and customer lines in the event of an unforeseen and prolonged power shutdown. Power disruption could be caused by emergency weather conditions or a building fire. Functional areas that are prioritized for recovery in this BCP include the customer support desk and finance team.
Operations at Risk
Includes possible risks with key operational functions which would greatly disrupt business and customer continuity. This also involves the magnitude of risk to each function, which will help the BCP committee decide on appropriate preventive actions.
Operation: Customer Support Operation Description: Customer support team looking after 24-hour global operations of live chat and customer calls for US, EMEA and APAC regions Business Impact: Critical Impact description: 100% of live chats go through the customer support team in Manila. 20% of live calls are routed to Manila office. A disruption would mean no more live chat support and customers experiencing significant wait times on calls Project timeline and team schedules
Recovery Strategy
Outlines all the relevant procedures to restore business operations after an incident or crisis. A good recovery strategy includes a realistic recovery timeline and essential emergency resources.
IT personnel and BCP committees should operate alternate backup programs and servers to help save customer requests after power outage. Customer support should be able to receive the requests and respond to customers within 30 minutes. IT Director should operate alternate server rooms in Area B if the power outage last more than an hour to prevent huge revenue loss.
Roles & Responsibilities
Refers to key personnel and their assigned tasks during or after an incident. Each committee member has a unique set of responsibilities to successfully carry out the BCP for each business function.
Representative: Jon Sims Role: Head of Operations Contact Details: [email protected] Description of Responsibilities: 1. Must ensure BCPs are updated and must coordinate with team leaders regarding changes 2. Helps notify key stakeholders in EMEA region of threats in Customer Support programs & tools
Business Continuity Planning (BCP) is important because it helps organizations protect their business amid a crisis or emergency. A business continuity plan contains instructions that will serve as a guide for the organization to maintain their operations.
A business continuity plan should be tested at least every 6 months to verify the BCP’s effectiveness. Frequent testing can also allow the discovery of gaps, and potential issues. This will help the organization update protocols and strategies accordingly.
BCP documents should be updated regularly. If any organizational changes have been made in terms of team structures and operational procedures, the BCP should be updated. A review will be conducted to check if information in the BCP is still reliable. .
Outdated BCPs might result in loss of customer trust, huge revenue loss, and damage to brand and company reputation. This is why it is crucial for BCPs to remain up-to-date.
Regular BCP audits are essential to help evaluate emergency procedures and identify if there are vulnerabilities. They also help realign emergency procedures to the ISO 22301 standard, business goals, and industry practices. Up-to-date and efficient BCPs help businesses effectively manage any unexpected event, prevent extra costs, and continuously develop their overall processes and key functions. Using a business continuity plan checklist can aid business continuity managers and IT teams to ensure comprehensive BCP audit reports.
SafetyCulture , the world’s leading digital form mobile software, can help businesses create and prepare a good business continuity plan more efficiently. Paper-based business continuity plan templates and Excel spreadsheets can be troublesome for management to keep and regularly update. With SafetyCulture as a business continuity software , businesses can switch to a paperless planning process where you can create your own templates, easily assess the accuracy of recovery procedures, and update your plans as needed in your mobile device. With SafetyCulture, you can:
- Create and customize business continuity plans using your desktop, iPad, or even on your mobile phone
- Easily assign tasks to key personnel and BCP committee members
- Use speech to text dictation to easily complete audits
- Gather photographic evidence in your BCP drills
- Record electronic signatures as required
- Send and share an updated business continuity plan report to your team in a few taps. See sample business continuity plan PDF report here .
- Automatically save your BCPs in the cloud
To help you get started on your paperless planning, we have created the business continuity templates and checklists you can download and customize for free.
Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plan Template (IT)
A business continuity and disaster recovery plan template is used to identify business functions at risk during an emergency and come up with a plan for continuous operation and recovery. This business continuity and disaster recovery plan template aims to help IT teams and business continuity managers become proactive in preparing for events that could disrupt operations and come up with strategies for disaster recovery. This template empowers you to:
- Specify and prioritize IT functions for recovery during a disaster.
- Describe IT equipment/ systems at risk in disrupting normal operations and essential backup programs needed for recovery.
- Confirm assigned tasks with IT team members through their digital signatures.
Business Continuity Plan Checklist
Perform regular audits of your organization’s BCP with a business continuity plan checklist. Whether small or medium business, this checklist can be used to ensure BCPs are up to date and reflect current high impact operations. Review key operational functions outlined in the BCP including recovery strategies and relevant assigned resources. SafetyCulture (iAuditor) BCP templates can be edited to fit the organization’s needs.
- Download PDF Report
Business Continuity Awareness Checklist
This template highlights the importance of employee awareness and employee knowledge of business continuity plans and business continuity processes. As a business continuity process template, this document helps:
- Gauge the level of understanding employees have regarding BCP processes.
- Determine opportunities how to better acclimate teams to internal business continuity plans.
- Identify the need for continuous improvement of business continuity programs.

SafetyCulture staff writer
Erick Brent Francisco
Erick Brent Francisco is a content writer and researcher for SafetyCulture since 2018. As a content specialist, he is interested in learning and sharing how technology can improve work processes and workplace safety. His experience in logistics, banking and financial services, and retail helps enrich the quality of information in his articles.
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Perform regular audits of your organization’s BCP with a business continuity plan checklist. Whether small or medium business, this checklist…
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