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What is a Business Continuity Plan and How it Relates to a Disaster Recovery Plan

By Cloudmatika 27 December, 2022

A business continuity plan (BCP) is an essential strategy we must prepare early. Read this article to understand its importance for your company.

Natural disasters or calamities can undoubtedly affect a company's sustainability. You cannot avoid them but anticipate them by designing a good Business Continuity Plan. A business Continuity Plan is a plan or strategy that you must prepare early to reduce the worst impact of unexpected events.

You may still be wondering about the Business Continuity Plan (BCP) because you are not familiar with this term. However, you need to understand the importance of this plan to anticipate the worst events that can happen to the company. Just see this discussion until the end to get to know BCP.
 

What is a Business Continuity Plan (BCP)?

A business Continuity Plan is a plan and strategy made to anticipate the worst impact of a disaster, disaster, or crisis on the continuity of a business or company. If you prepare a BCP, the company's operational activities will continue to run as usual after a disaster.

At first glance, BCP looks similar to a disaster recovery plan, which is also used to anticipate disasters. The difference is that BCP includes a holistic approach to business aspects and ensures sustainability, including human and asset resources in the recovery plan in BCP.

Also Read: Disaster Recovery Plan sebagai Solusi Pemulihan Pasca Bencana Bisnis Anda

The BCP range covers natural disasters, social disasters such as monetary crises, wars, and pandemics, and technological crises such as cyber attacks, human errors, or sudden power outages.

Meanwhile, a disaster recovery plan only contains recovery steps for data, computers, software, or computer networks when a disaster endangers the company's technology resources.
 

Why Does Your Company Need a Business Continuity Plan (BCP)?

Designing a Business Continuity Plan takes a lot of time. You also have to conduct pilot tests to determine the effectiveness of the BCP design. However, there are many important reasons that your company must have a BCP. What are they?
 

1. Faster Recovery of Operational Activities

It is not easy for a company to return to normal activities after experiencing an adverse event. Although you cannot use BCP to avoid disasters, this plan can at least reduce the unfavorable impact of the plan. Your company will recover faster and be able to operate again if you have made a business continuity plan early on.
 

2. Not Relying on Backup Alone

Backing up your data with an external hard drive or cloud is enough for recovery. This assumption is wrong because these two storage media can be damaged by disaster. BCP's role in maintaining data security is to provide various plans to continue accessing the data needed even if the impact of the disaster still befalls your business.

Also Read: Metode Backup yang Tepat untuk Menjaga Keamanan Data dalam Lingkungan Masyarakat Digital
 

3. Data Will Not Be Covered by Insurance

Insurance can cover life or material losses due to natural disasters. However, insurance cannot guarantee company data lost due to any disaster, especially cyber attacks. Companies with a mature BCP can regain lost data within minutes or days.
 

4. Able to Outperform Competitors after a Disaster

There are still many Indonesian companies that still need to get a BCP, including your competitors. As a result, they have to wait up to several months to resume normal activities because they have yet to establish a business continuity plan. A BCP helps your company get back up and running to continue serving customers as before.
 

How do you design the right business continuity plan (BCP)?

The four reasons above describe the importance of a Business Continuity Plan for your business. So, how do you design the right BCP strategy based on its function? See the complete steps below.
 

1. Perform Risk Analysis

First, it would be best to analyze the risks that may occur in the company. This step, or risk assessment, includes the company's internal activities or environment. You should also evaluate the external environment that can affect the company's performance in doing business.

Examples of risk assessment in the company's internal scope include still-vulnerable computer network security. At the same time, external factors can consist of natural disasters, such as floods in the rainy season, that can damage the company's infrastructure.
 

2. Analyze the Business Impact

After recognizing some risks, you must determine the business impact of the abovementioned disruptions or dangers. This business impact can be revenue (related to company finances) or non-revenue (regulation, company reputation, stakeholders).

Business impact analysis helps you discover crises in IT systems, business processes, etc. To make a Business Impact Analysis, you must list all the company's activities, facilities, and systems and determine the impact felt during a disaster.
 

3. Create a Plan

At this stage, you create central and alternative plans when a crisis occurs. Remember that you should make a plan that is easy to implement. This plan can follow some rules from the company or government regulations. Make a comprehensive plan that covers all aspects of your business.
 

4. Develop the Plan

Developing some plans to determine the steps to take in the recovery stage. You can discuss the strategic steps employees should take according to their field of work with all company employees. This stage also allows all employees to participate when a crisis occurs in the company.
 

5. Conduct Tests and Audits

The Business Continuity Plan design that has been made is still being determined. You must first test the plan made through several implementation steps. Then, conduct an audit to assess the effectiveness of the plan. If there are still shortcomings, you can fix them until the plan is appropriate and practical to implement during a disaster.
 

Complete your Business Continuity Plan with Cloudmatika's Disaster Recovery Plan!

At a glance, the BCP can be used to cope with any disaster that endangers your business. A disaster recovery plan is also included in the BCP plan or strategy, so you need to prepare it early so that the company's data and computer networks remain safe.

Now, you can prepare a disaster recovery plan with Cloudmatika. Our services can also help you recover data lost due to disaster more quickly. This advantage can minimize the duration of downtime and material losses that befall your business. Management is also relatively easy and flexible, so you will have no difficulty operating this service.

Want to know more about Cloud Backup Disaster Recovery Plan? Contact us immediately via WhatsApp and consult your business needs with Cloudmatika. Plan your post-disaster business resource recovery strategy only with our excellent services!
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