Crises are inevitable in business—be it natural disasters, pandemics, human error, system failures or other unforeseen events. PwC's 2023 Global Crisis and Resilience Survey revealed that 96% of business leaders encountered disruption in the past two years and 76% stated that the impact on operations was medium to high.
As a business leader who wants to stay ahead of the game, resilience should be a top priority. You don’t want to get caught off guard during disruptions—you could lose thousands of dollars or your reputation could take a hit. That’s why it's super important to create a business continuity plan that helps you proactively anticipate and respond to crises.
A well-crafted business continuity plan (BCP) template is your organization's roadmap for surviving unexpected disruptions. It outlines the steps necessary to keep your business operational during and after a crisis.
In this article, we’ll provide nine professional business continuity plan templates to get you started and cover how to create an effective business continuity plan.
A business continuity plan (BCP) is a playbook that explains the procedures your company must follow to maintain or resume operations in the event of a risk or crisis. These risks may include cyberattacks, civic unrest, human errors, pandemics, natural disasters or other threats.
This plan covers your essential business processes, human resources, assets, business partners and more. It also specifies the systems and processes that need to be sustained and describes how to maintain them to minimize downtime during unplanned events.
With a solid BCP plan, your team can quickly respond to risks and crises, reduce downtime, maintain customer confidence and protect your brand reputation. It also helps your company continue to meet its obligations to customers, suppliers and other stakeholders.
A business continuity plan and a disaster recovery plan are both essential components of any company's risk management strategy. Together, they are considered business continuity disaster recovery (BCDR).
However, they are not the same!
A disaster recovery plan focuses on restoring IT infrastructure, systems and operations after a crisis, while a business continuity plan covers all aspects of business operations, including personnel, facilities, processes and technology.
That said, a disaster recovery plan is a crucial element for maintaining business continuity. And the action items in your organization's disaster recovery plan should be informed by the business continuity plan.
If you want your business continuity plan to be effective, remember to incorporate these key components.
Here are nine business continuity templates you can customize to fit your branding and business planning needs.
This lilac-themed business continuity plan is the perfect tool to prepare your company for risks or unplanned disruptions. It has dedicated sections for key contacts, communication guidelines, threat analysis, recovery phases and training and awareness.
By filling out these sections, stakeholders have a set of guidelines and procedures to follow during emergencies. You can adapt it to suit your company’s risk management strategy—no matter your business size or niche.
Each page of this plan is decorated with stunning visuals and graphics that drive visual appeal and hook your audience until the end. This template is customizable—you can edit content, change images, apply custom colors and add or remove pages.
Invite stakeholders to view, comment on or edit this plan in real time or asynchronously with Visme’s collaboration tool. Team members can also leave feedback, reply to or resolve comments.
Use the workflow tool to assign roles or different sections of the plan for team members to work on and manage progress, deadlines and corrections—all in one place.
Unlike our previous example, this template is packed with stunning visuals, flowcharts and tables that illustrate your business continuity plan.
This business continuity plan example outlines the different stages of managing hard failure, from impact analysis to risk assessment and preventive measures. You’ll also find information on critical functions and key contacts and resources.
Notice how the first flowchart illustrates the link between different business functions and their threat types. There's also a table that lists the threat type, likelihood and impact. With Visme, you can easily visualize any business process with flowcharts, diagrams, charts, graphs, maps and other data visualization tools.
From a design perspective, this template is incredible. The visual hierarchy is top-notch and beautifully executed. The white text on a dark background creates a striking visual contrast that grabs readers’ attention and guides their eyes to the most important information.
If you run a construction firm, this business continuity plan has everything you need to enhance your company’s resilience. It outlines all the procedures for responding to different scenarios, ensuring your company can continue operations even during adverse conditions.
This template isn’t set in stone. With our intuitive editor, you can easily adapt it to similar industries, such as architecture, engineering, project management, manufacturing, real estate development and more. This plan accounts for the project transition protocol, stakeholder communication plan, project review status, team support and training and contingency measures to be taken during a crisis.
The fusion of geometric shapes and a contemporary design layout will give your document a dynamic flair. Moreover, the black, white and red color blend creates a visually striking aesthetic.
Use this business continuity framework to protect your company’s reputation. It demonstrates you have taken proactive steps to ensure operational continuity in the event of a disaster. You can replicate it to address other business continuity types such as technology, workforce, security or safety.
This template features key sections of your BCP framework: introduction and conclusions, key contacts, incident response, resource allocation, review and improvement.
The contemporary design grabs attention with its sleek layout and excellent typography, setting the stage for a fantastic reading experience.
But it's not just about aesthetics. The use of stunning images and visual assets helps illustrate the plan's critical components. Visme has an extensive library of graphics and visual assets, such as 2D and 3D icons, shapes, lines, 3D characters, stock photos and videos to make your BCP engaging and easy to understand.
Prepare for any emergencies or disruptions, such as application downtime, in your company's operations with this stunning BCP framework. This template—designed with SaaS, tech or e-commerce companies in mind—is here to help you plan for the worst and ensure your business stays up and running.
Not only does it mark the threat level as high, but it visualizes each phase of your BCP, objectives and action plan for each phase in a table format.
With its user-friendly business continuity plan checklist, you can easily prioritize operations and responses, identify critical recovery phases and create a complete restoration plan.
Do you have a draft of your plan in a Google Sheet or Microsoft Excel? Rather than filling out your table manually, you can copy and paste data into your project. You also have the option to embed your table or connect it to live data. Feel free to change the table theme or design, edit headers and cells and more.
Use this cyber security business continuity plan to minimize the impact of cyber attacks or other security breaches. It ensures critical business operations can continue in the face of a security incident. With a subtle mix of white and accent colors, this template creates a minimalist look that draws the reader’s eye to your message without distractions.
The document starts with an intro that explains what the BCP is about. It further outlines roles and contact details for key personnel as well as internal and external communication guidelines.
Next up is the threat analysis and risk management plan and contracts for suppliers and partners. The final part of this IT continuity plan explains the recovery phases, procedures for responding to cybersecurity incidents and a training and awareness plan.
Remember to customize this plan to align your company’s branding with Visme’s Brand Design Tool. This sends a message that continuity planning is an integral part of your company's values and operations, rather than just a generic set of procedures.
To do this, just input your website URL; the wizard will pull in brand assets and save them in your brand kit. That way, you don’t have to manually add them every time you create a design. The best part is that you’ll have beautiful, branded templates crafted specifically for you.
Disruptions in healthcare operations can have severe consequences not just for your patients but also to your reputation. Even during a crisis, you can’t compromise on the availability of medical supplies, equipment and critical personnel.
This business continuity plan is the key to ensuring you aren’t caught off guard. It prepares you for events such as natural disasters, cyber-attacks or disease outbreaks while minimizing the disruption to patient care.
This one-page business continuity plan analyzes the impact of each natural disaster, along with an immediate recovery strategy and long-term plan—all in a tabular format. With this detailed plan, you can keep critical systems and processes operational and continue to provide essential care and services during and after a crisis or disaster.
Keep stakeholders engaged and enhance their experience with animation and interactive elements like links, popups, hover effects, animated icons, illustrations and special effects. For example, you can link your one-pager to a website or document that contains detailed information about the plan.
Nonprofits need a continuity plan to continue serving their communities even in the face of adversity. This business continuity plan is designed to minimize the impact of unexpected events so your organization can continue operations and fulfill its mission.
This business continuity gap analysis template thoroughly details the organization’s financial status, cost reduction strategies, fundraising opportunities and grants, communication and transparency with stakeholders and continuous review and revisions of the plan.
If you need help tailoring the content to your project, take advantage of Visme’s AI Writer. Input a detailed prompt and watch the tool generate high-quality drafts, proofread your existing text or modify the tone to appeal to your audience.
This business continuity plan for leadership change is crucial for succession planning. With this template, your organization can continue operations smoothly, even during a transition period.
In this template, you will find the details for key contacts, a transition planning strategy, service delivery continuity and financial stability. Use it as a reference to guide and prepare for unexpected events that could impact leadership or key roles, such as sudden illness or other unforeseen circumstances.
This BCP design template is a stunning work of art. From the color scheme to the layout, every element is crafted to evoke emotions. Each page has beautiful visuals that strike the perfect balance between professionalism and aesthetic appeal.
Download the report in PDF or image format and share it offline with stakeholders. Alternatively, generate a shareable online URL or HTML code to embed it on your landing page or website.
Monitor how your readers engage with your plan using Visme Analytics. Gain insight into metrics, such as views, unique visits, average time and average completion.
A well-crafted business continuity plan (BCP) is your organization's roadmap for surviving unexpected disruptions— big or small.
However, business continuity management is not just about putting together a checklist of actions.
To truly prepare for the unexpected, you must approach BCP development with a proactive, strategic and intentional mindset.
In this section, we’ll break down the steps involved in writing an effective business continuity plan.
Start by forming a dedicated team responsible for developing, implementing and maintaining your business continuity plan.
Your team should work together to identify potential risks, develop plans for mitigating those risks, test them and be ready to implement them in the event of a crisis. It's important to ensure that the team is diverse, well-trained and has the resources to manage a crisis effectively.
This team should include representatives from various departments across your organization, such as IT, operations, human resources, finance, communications and legal. It’s advisable to have a high-level executive, such as a CEO, COO or CFO, who will not only provide leadership and support but also act as a link between company executives and the rest of the team.
Appoint a dedicated BCP coordinator or manager who will serve as the primary point of contact for the BCP team and coordinate activities across departments. You’ll also need a communications expert to handle information sharing related to the plan. Depending on your company size, you may need to bring in risk management experts, external consultants or advisors.
A well-defined Business Continuity Plan (BCP) should spell out what you aim to achieve, what your plan will cover and specific benchmarks for success.
For example, your goal(s) could be to minimize downtime for critical business functions, protect essential data and IT infrastructure from loss or damage, ensure the safety and well-being of employees during a crisis and minimize financial losses caused by disruptions.
Your scope should discuss the breadth and limitations of your plan. What type of disruption does it cover—natural disasters, cyberattacks, power outages? Which business functions are included—IT, finance or customer service? What level of detail will be provided—a high-level overview or step-by-step procedures?
Defining your goals and scope provides clear direction for the recovery team and ensures that your BCP aligns with the overall business objectives.
For your BCP to work, all different departments in your organization need to get involved and work together. This ensures all aspects of the business are considered and potential risks or vulnerabilities are properly addressed.
Start by mapping your critical business functions and identifying the departments that support them. Within each department, pinpoint key personnel who play a crucial role in those functions.
Then, hold brainstorming sessions with these key personnel using Visme’s online whiteboard. The goal is to learn about their key processes, the systems and applications that support your operations, the potential threats they might face, and to develop recovery strategies relevant to that department. This collaborative approach ensures that resources are allocated to the most critical areas.
After gathering insights from brainstorming or interview sessions, develop a list of your organization's critical functions, processes and activities. These functions will vary depending on the industry, size and nature of the organization.
Once you’ve identified critical business functions, carefully assess and analyze the potential threats that could impact them. Threats can come from various sources, such as natural disasters, cyber-attacks, supply chain disruptions, financial crises, human errors and even more specific threats like losing a key supplier.
Next, evaluate how each threat could disrupt your operations, considering factors like data loss, physical damage or employee displacement.
Evaluate the probability that each risk could occur by reviewing historical data, industry reports and expert opinions. Then, evaluate the potential impact of each risk on business operations.
When assessing the financial, operational and reputational impact of each risk, you may want to consider these questions:
Prioritize threats based on their likelihood of occurring and potential severity of impact. This activity will help you prioritize the most critical areas and develop appropriate mitigation strategies.
The BIA analysis helps you determine the maximum tolerable downtime (RTO) and acceptable amount of data loss (RPO) for each function. It analyzes the critical business functions within your organization, the major resources they utilize, their operational dependencies and the average time required for each function.
Recovery Time Objective (RTO) refers to the maximum amount of time that a system, network or application can be down after a disruption or failure before the resulting impact becomes unacceptable.
The Recovery Point Objective (RPO) is the maximum amount of data loss an organization can withstand in the event of a disaster or system failure.
Every organization has a unique Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO). It all depends on the nature of its business, the industry it operates in, any regulatory requirements it needs to comply with and other operational factors.
What's more, different parts of a business can even have different RTOs and RPOs, which is why executives need to set them up based on their specific needs. This analysis helps prioritize your recovery efforts based on what's essential to keep your business running.
For each identified threat, develop detailed recovery strategies to ensure critical business functions can resume as quickly as possible.
For example, this might involve workforce redundancy plans, data backup and recovery procedures, alternative communication channels and plans for relocating operations to a backup site if necessary.
Now that you have all the information you need for your business continuity plan (BCP), the next step is to draft it in a user-friendly format. That’s the beauty of pre-made templates—they can help you save time and effort.
Our templates are designed by professionals and include placeholder content that can inspire and fuel your creativity.
To get started, we recommend that you choose one of the templates we’ve shared above and customize it to meet your specific needs using Visme’s intuitive editor. You can easily edit the content, replace images, apply custom colors, input your fonts and logo and much more.
If you’re racing against the clock and need to create your BCP quickly, consider using Visme’s AI Document Generator. Write a detailed prompt explaining what you want to create, choose the design theme and watch the tool produce a plan with ready-made design and content.
If you’re creating BCPs for different risks or processes, duplicate the template and use our Dynamic Fields feature to do that.
Just create custom fields on each plan and you can make changes to multiple documents with a single click.
When drafting your plan, it’s essential to ensure that it is easily accessible to all relevant personnel and outlines the roles and responsibilities of team members during a crisis. That way, everyone knows their specific duties and responsibilities, increasing the chances of a successful response during a crisis.
A BCP is only effective if it's tested regularly. Conduct tabletop exercises, simulations and drills to test the effectiveness of the BCP, identify weaknesses and ensure everyone understands their roles. Evaluate your company’s response to various scenarios and identify areas for improvement.
The BCP is a living document. Based on the outcomes of testing and exercises, document flaws and lessons learned and use them to update the BCP accordingly. Likewise, review and update it periodically to reflect changes in your business environment, technology or regulatory requirements.
Moreover, regularly train your employees on their roles and responsibilities during a crisis. Ensure they understand how to access and implement the BCP during a disruption. Read this article to learn how to create a successful training program that not only educates but engages your employees.
A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is important because it helps your organization prepare for, respond to and recover from unexpected events that could disrupt normal business operations.
BCPs outline the procedures and strategies a company should follow during a disaster, such as a cyber attack, natural disaster or any other unforeseen event that could affect the organization's ability to operate normally.
By having a BCP in place, businesses can minimize the impact of a disruption and quickly resume operations, which can help reduce downtime, prevent financial losses and ultimately protect the organization's reputation.
A business Continuity Plan (BCP) typically falls under senior management or a designated team within an organization.
This team is responsible for identifying potential risks and threats that could impact the organization's operations, developing a BCP that outlines the steps to be taken in the event of a disruption and ensuring that the plan is regularly reviewed and updated.
In some cases, organizations may choose to hire external consultants or engage with third-party service providers to develop and implement a BCP.
A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) should be created, reviewed and updated on a regular basis to ensure that it remains relevant and effective.
The frequency of reviews and updates will depend on several factors, including the size and complexity of your organization, the level of risk it faces and any changes to the business environment or regulatory landscape.
Many organizations review their BCPs annually, while others may opt for a more frequent review cycle, such as quarterly or bi-annually. However, you need to update it whenever there are significant changes to your organization's operations, such as introducing new products or services, changes in the workforce or modifications to IT systems.
Business Continuity Plans (BCPs) can fail for a variety of reasons, including:
The time it takes to create a business continuity plan can vary depending on the size and complexity of your organization. Generally, it can take several weeks to several months to develop a comprehensive plan. With Visme’s AI document generator, you can create one in a fraction of the time.
The six phases of business continuity planning are as follows:
A well-crafted BCP is the key to ensuring your business’ resilience and long-term success.
This article provides everything you need to develop a robust BCP that prepares your organization to respond to and recover from various disruptions effectively.
Now is the time to make it count. Visme offers an extensive library of templates, AI-powered tools, an infinite whiteboard, analytics and advanced features to streamline business continuity planning. You can easily collaborate with stakeholders, brainstorm and create a plan that’s not only robust but also easy to execute and update.
Get started on creating your business continuity plan today with Visme. Sign up now to ensure your business is prepared for any unexpected disruptions.
