What is a Business Continuity Plan 2019 - YouTube

What is a business continuity plan?

A great way to think about the purpose of a business continuity plan is to think

about prevention and recovery from a disruptive event. A business continuity

plan is not an emergency response plan.

We are frequently asked the difference between an emergency response plan and a

business continuity plan. Actually they are related to each other but quite

different in scope. An emergency response plan is a set of rapid response

procedures to address how to maintain health and safety of people and property

loss or damage. For instance evacuation from a burning building, how to protect

human life during an earthquake or a tornado, where your team will assemble

after a building evacuation so someone can account for all staff members.

A business continuity plan is a document that is utilized after the emergent life

health and safety needs have been addressed and the active event is over.

I like to use the verbiage "once things have settled down and the emergency

responders have cleared out and it is time to get your office running up and

running again. This plan should be a primary resource and can help navigate

the road to recovery. Keep in mind that your office may need to be relocated,

staffing levels may be significantly reduced, internet services may not be

available, but the show must go on and there is still a need to conduct basic

services of your office perhaps in a reduced mode.

A business continuity plan is a collection of resources, actions,

procedures, and information that is developed, tested, and held in readiness

for use in the event of a major disruption of business operations.

Remember this business continuity plan has been carefully thought out and

documented during the calm stress-free period of time, the goal being to garner

the thoughts and the expertise of not only those in leadership positions but

also of staff who might have the best historical knowledge and an

understanding of how things could be done "the old-fashioned way" on a

temporary basis. Making critical decisions during a stressful event can

be difficult at best. A well documented plan serves as a recovery guide and

offers suggestions and alternatives to address various situations if they

arise, however no business continuity plan is ever 100% correct for every

situation. But, at least you have a starting point to help recover the

business operations of your unit.

A business continuity plan will identify and describe the most critical functions

of the unit. A business continuity plan will offer suggestions and alternative

plans to support the continuation of these critical functions during an

emergency event that might include loss of people, loss of space or facility, and

or loss of technology. A plan will also identify where important documents or

data can be found as well as backup sources. These include paper copies (may

be files saved to the cloud) or other offices that may have a copy. One thing

to remember is that "it may not be the regular office staff who needs to find

these documents" during an emergency! Please document everything so that a

third party can respond and recover critical information. Identify measures

that can be undertaken now to reduce the impact or severity of the event should a

disaster occur. In other words...what are some steps that we can take now to better prepare for a devastating event?

Every aspect of a business continuity plan should be based on reducing risk.

Some examples of this include: making sure that all staff members understand

the significance of sensitive paper document protections and the backup

plans should those documents be unavailable.

Having an inventory of critical supplies and materials so that they can be replaced quickly.

Having contact information at your fingertips for key vendors suppliers constituents

or business partners should the need arise to contact them outside of normal business hours.

The last point here is that Ohio University internal audit unit has view only access to the Ohio ready business continuity software and has a

vested interest in learning if your unit has a business continuity plan. If it is up-to-date and if there are any action items identified

to improve office resiliency. NOTE: internal audit may request that a business continuity plan

be developed during the department audit process.

Here is a picture of one of the first pages of a business continuity plan. I'd like to show you how

intuitive the software system is to use.

You simply follow the tabs that are across the top and then answer the questions as you move through the

various pages that are shown on the left side of the page.

Be sure to save your work on the right side of the page. The "save" button will

turn green once work is saved. Please note that some of the pages "autosave" and you will not see the save button.

NOTE: the software is continually being revised and improved so pages may look slightly different from one time to the

other. Any major updates will be communicated to you in advance.

This is the page where critical functions are identified and documented. Each critical function is individually recognized and a thorough description is written.

After this is completed then click on each link at the left side of the page to

answer more specific questions. Please be complete in your response and again

document as if a third party might need to step in and recover the office operations. Be careful not to use acronyms or if you do make sure you

spell them out at the first reference to ensure that they are clearly understood.

Go through each of the links on the left side of the page to fully flush out your

response to each critical function. Again this information is invaluable to a

third party who might need to recover the operations with or without regular staff members present.

The final product that is produced from the Ohio ready software is a PDF

document that looks like the picture below. The document is professional in

appearance, it has each section clearly identified in a table of contents and

contains the vital information that has been documented by the end users.

Your business continuity plan can be accessed at any time so if you'd like to make changes to the plan, add a new critical function or if an incident occurs at

another institution and it is determined that a plan should be in place here at

Ohio University for that same situation, simply sign in and begin to document on your plan.

Keeping your plan as current as possible is the goal and it makes the

annual review process so much simpler.

I love this quote because it is true! "The only thing harder than creating this

plan, is trying to explain to the Ohio leadership why you didn't"!

Thank you for watching this short training session. Please do not hesitate to contact the emergency management office if you have further questions.