What is a Business Continuity Plan!
An interruption or natural disaster could occur at any time. It may impact your ability to provide products and services to your customers. How will you resume operations the day after such an event? Where will your employees report? Answers to these, and a lot of other questions can be found in a Business Continuity Plan.
At a minimum, a Business Continuity Plan would include the following categories:
1. Management Commitments, Roles and Responsibilities.
2. Business Impact Analysis, identifying your Services or Products.
3. Plans, Measures and Arrangements for Continuity.
4. Readiness Procedures.
5. Quality Assurance Techniques.
Do you have such a plan? If not, you will need to create one. You may already have some of these documents. First begin by assessing your current operations; then determine what resources you will need. Start out by identifying your management team, area(s) of responsibility, and contact information.
Next conduct a business impact analysis listing all of your services or products, rank order, and impact; both internal and external. You will then need to develop plans and measures to assure continuity; as well as written procedures to ensure the plan is implemented, so you can maintain overall business continuity.
Lastly a documented appraisal, including a graded drill, is critical to assess the plans accuracy, relevance and effectiveness. If you do not have a documented continuity plan, consider utilizing an audit consultant to assist your team, or perform this for you, so that you can focus on what’s most important to you - your customers.
At Storti Quality Consulting, we take pride in helping our customers use quality management practices to enhance results and increase profits. If you’d like to talk about Quality, please call us at 215.657.0837, send an email to ralph.storti@storticonsulting.net, or visit our website, www.storticonsulting.net.
