Business Recovery Planning

Business Recovery may be required if a company is not performing to produce profits. In that case, we call it 'Business Turn-Around'. It can be accomplished by Business Analysis and Management Coaching.

What we are addressing here is: Business Recovery after a 'Disaster'. In that case it is often called Disaster Recovery Planning. We prefer to call it 'Business Recovery Planning' because we are planning the recovery of the business, not the disaster. It can be accomplished by creating a good Recovery Plan and Executing it as planned when a disaster strikes.

'Disasters' can be small or large, of short duration or long duration, with high or low business impact. They can be intangible, such as a lawsuit, a labour dispute, a strike, a marketing error. Or they can be tangible, affecting not just the business, but hit people, utilities, communications, equipment, conputers, computer network, building, infrastructure, city or even country.

Regardless the nature of the disaster, we must have an 'Emergency Response Plan' to deal with its consequenses. Failure to do so, may lead to loss of business, and if large enough, lead to loss of the business.

A good plan does not only address the Business portion of the recovery, but starts off with addressing the response to the emergency, regardless its size, nature or its consequences. Failure to do so may lead to legal liability issues.

Emergency Response Plan (ERP)

The Emergency Response Plan main concerns are:

• First Aid
• Containment
• Salvage
• Recovery

This means that the Business Recovery Plan is a sub-set of the Emergency Response Plan.

Business Recovery Plan (BRP)

The Business Recovery Plan deals with:

• Setting up a temporary business
• Running the temporary business, as a going concern
• Setting up the permament business
• Transfer to the permanent business
• Running the permanent business, as a going concern

Contingency Plan (CP)

While the Contingency Plan can mean any plan, it is usually used for the Recovery Plan that deals with Computer Equipment and its Network, i.e. the ITCP, the Information Technology Contingency Plan. As such it is a sub-set of the Business Recovery Plan.