Analysing your business
The first step in business continuity planning is identifying your critical functions – those parts of your business that are most crucial in keeping your business going. This will help you prioritise which parts of your business to get up and running as soon as possible after a business disruption, and tell you what information to include in your business continuity plan.
You may want to consider:
- what minimum resources you need to deliver critical functions (eg in terms of staff, utilities, suppliers, premises, data)
- the impacts of losing critical functions on your business (eg loss of revenue, loss of reputation, legal action)
- how quickly you need to get your critical functions up and running
- what dependencies exist between different functions
- what other organisations / suppliers you are dependent on.
Following a business disruption it’s unlikely you’ll be able to get everything back to a normal level immediately. When identifying your critical functions, consider the minimum acceptable level you can operate at, so that your business gets up and running as soon as possible.
Once you have looked at your business in detail, you can move on to considering what risks you face which may result in a disruption to your business.
