Plan Now or Fail Later! - The Case for a Business Continuity Plan

The purpose of creating a BCP is to do all your scenario planning ahead of time when you are calm and not under the stress or pressure of an emergency. When the issue arises, you simply get out the plan and execute as you have trained. I grew up in Houston and still have a lot of family living in Katy and Sugarland, suburbs of Houston. The entire area was hit by Hurricane Beryl over a week ago and it knocked out power to over two million people. It has now been a week and there are still a significant number of people without power. I have seen many pictures of parking lots full of power repair trucks waiting for their instructions.

I realize that restoring power to a city the size of Houston is complicated, but it sure appears that CenterPoint Energy was caught without a robust recovery plan. Knowing that it is only a matter of time before a hurricane hits a city on the Gulf Coast, they should have spent time role-playing multiple scenarios and preparing detailed plans to secure supplies and activate the teams to restore power.

Every organization should spend time creating its Business Continuity, or Contingency Plan. Either you plan now or fail later! Even companies that have tried and true processes and mature operations will eventually run into the unexpected and need to react.

While I had the privilege of working for Walt Disney World in the Information Technology department, I led a team that had the responsibility of creating the contingency plan for Year 2000, or as it was known Y2K. Many predicted the end of the world as we knew it. Others like myself felt it would be something that with proper planning, we would all wake up fine on January 1, 2000, and continue with life. We had to plan for many scenarios such as a temporary loss of power, key system failures, or other challenges. My team created a process to create contingency plans for many scenarios and worked with all the Walt Disney World business units to create the Business Continuity Plans.

Following is a simple list of ten steps that you could follow to create your BCP document.

Step 1: Organize Planning Team and Identify Critical Areas

Step 2: List your area’s most critical business processes.

Step 3: Identify the impact on the company from an interruption in the process.

Step 4: List the things that make the process happen. (Enablers)

Step 5: List what can be done in advance to minimize the loss of the Enabler.

Step 6: Develop a workaround plan and what triggers the execution of the plan.

Step 7: List the steps required to return to normal operation.

Step 8: Estimate the cost to implement the plan.

Step 9: List the individual, or sub-plans to be developed.

Step 10: Identify communication and training needs.

Once you create your BCP, it is critical that you spend time educating your team and training them on how to implement that plan when the need arises. Part of your execution plan includes who has the authority to initiate the plan, and how you let all involved departments and key team members know you are executing the plan. Keep in mind that you may not have access to normal communication tools such as email.

I recommend that you hold a quarterly BCP update meeting when you rehearse key components of your plan and role-play scenarios so that you are smooth when you must deal with a real disruption to your business. In the world of call centers, having a mature BCP is critical and is one of the first things we create when starting up a center. On more than one occasion, we were forced to execute the BCP due to a typhoon hitting the primary call center location or an earthquake striking another. When these emergencies occurred, we were able to quickly alert all parties that we were implementing the BCP. Within minutes, alternate messaging and call routing were started and there was minimal impact on our customers.

I have developed a BCP Planning Worksheet and you are welcome to have a copy. Send an email to [email protected] and request the BCP Worksheet. If you need additional help to create a full BCP for your organization, we are available to assist you in this critical area. Don’t be caught like CenterPoint Energy by not having a plan to take care of your customers and minimize the impact of any business disruption. Systems fail. Weather is unpredictable. Humans make errors. You will never eliminate the source of these disruptions, but you can minimize their impact.