Business Continuity Planning (BCP) on a budget

You know you should, customers are demanding and if you want to grow the auditors will require, but how can you afford business continuity planning with the $0 budget you’ve got? Sound familiar? Lucky for you, KingsBridgeBCP has been writing Business Continuity Plans since 1983, so we’ve seen it all! Here are some excellent ways to stretch your non-existent BCP budget.

1 - Talk to your insurance provider

Business Continuity plans demonstrate that an organization is aware of risks and their impacts to the business. With a BCP, they are either going to accept it or plan to recover (quicker) from it. In either case, it demonstrates the acknowledgement of the risk and having taken steps to address it, hopefully resulting in the business returning the operations faster and requiring a smaller settlement. Depending on your insurance provider, you may be able to negotiate a discount on your premiums if you present them with a copy of your plan.

2 - Talk to your sales department.

Ask your sale department if customers (and more importantly prospects) are asking for a Business Continuity plan? This is becoming a common requirement and you may be losing business as a result. Salespeople hate losing business (current or future), because it’s costing them money (commission) and wasting their time (taking them away from winnable engagements). Check with them and see if they have an idea of the volume it’s “costing” by not having a BCP, winning those deals may be enough to fund the planning process.

3 - Consider a software tool.

I know… I know…. Of course we’re going to say that. Hear me out: Time is money! You can save time by creating and managing your plan in a software tool. We spend hours/days/weeks/months/years figuring out how to make your BCP faster, easier and more robust. SHIELD has a Free edition, which has some limitations, but it's FREE! No hidden catches, no hidden credit card requirements. Free – FOREVER. Free is always budget friendly. If you grow out of Free, SHIELD starts at less than $20/day.

4 - Negotiate payment plans with your vendor.

Don’t have the budget upfront to pay for BCP software? Ask if you can take the subscription model? If their monthly payments are still more than your budget can afford, ask what happens if you subscribe for a longer period of time (SHIELD offers discounts for multi-year subscriptions), ask if testimonials/referrals would impact the price (SHIELD offers discounts for both). If you have something to offer (business/cash) and the provider wants your business, they’ll most often work with you. Just ask, the worst they’ll say is no. They aren’t going to increase the price. If they do, maybe you don’t want to trust them with your critical information. This can work for consulting too! Investing a small amount in a few experts can save you a large amount of time, and thus money, down the road.

5 - Leverage the near misses.

Do you already have a plan? Use that weekend flood or small storage room fire as opportunities to review how your plan might have stood up if the small incident had been something bigger. If you don’t already have a plan, these near misses are great conversation starters. Capturing the ideas from these discussions can be just what you need to start pulling a Business Continuity plan together.

6 - Don't let the Threat Risk Assessment slow you down.

While the Threat Risk Assessment (TRA) is important for learning what threats could impact your business. It’s not critical enough to derail your momentum. Regardless of what causes a business interruption, it’s likely to cause one of four possible results: no building, no people, no systems, or no third-party providers. BCi and DRI “best practices” stress you should complete a formal TRA, but “real world practices” have taught us that few/no businesses care what caused the disruption, they are more concerned about the results of the incident. So, writing your plan to prepare for these four results allows you to limit the arduous TRA process (for now). And it ensures that regardless of what happens, you’ll have a plan to address it.

7 - Try a “light” Business Impact Assessment.

If you don’t have the time to look at all the business processes within your organization, start with the obvious. If your business is making widgets make sure your widget sales, manufacturing and distribution business processes are current. Cover the basics and save the rest for another phase of the project. When you look under every stone, you’ll find out all sorts of inter-departmental dependencies you never thought possible, but to do this requires more time and effort than your BCP budget allows.

8 - Incorporate Business Impact Assessment thinking into the Change Management process.

Adding another widget line or bringing on a new piece of software? Objectively ask yourself how critical that new widget line or software will be to your business before you implement it. Next revisit your recovery priorities. It’s very possible it will bump an existing recovery priority, so make sure your Business Impact Assessment (BIA) reflects this change. Small tasks make light work of keeping your BIA up-to date without having to go through a formal refresh.

9 - Keep old hardware “just in case.”

With so much hardware (and software) being on a subscription service, there is opportunity to get devices that are off lease. It's very likely they are still very capable work machines. This is an excellent way to get backup devices. The vendor of the hardware likely doesn’t want them back and will sell them to you at a heavily discounted price. So, pick up a few in the event a current device is damaged and a backup is needed (almost) immediately. Don’t have back-ups for everyone as it will require a full-time job to keep the back-ups current, just have enough to cover off the critical staff and their critical operations so your business doesn’t miss a beat.

10 - Do an after-hours laptop audit.

Wondering if those expensive laptops really are going home at the end of the day? Could you use the extra cash (desktops are cheaper than laptops) for your BCP budget? If you answer “yes” to both of those, try this one on for size. NOTE: We do recommend getting upper management support for this one! If your organization’s policy is to take ALL laptops home every night, once everyone has left for the day, stroll through the office and check for laptops. Find a laptop? Pick it up and leave your business card. The delinquent employee will need to make the ‘walk of shame’ to your office to reclaim their hardware. This is a definite deterrent to leaving it behind a second time! If a laptop isn’t a “requirement” for their tasks, provide them a desktop. The “savings” could go towards your "BCP on a budget".

11 - Leverage evacuation drills as mini-exercises.

“No time” is a usual excuse for not exercising the BCP.

Totally fair, we get it, everyone is busy and maxed out with too many tasks and not enough time.

However, it’s very likely that fire drills or emergency evacuations are requirements for your business/building. Well, here is an opportunity!! This is a perfect opportunity to check in on an unsuspecting team and do a little scenario exercise with them. Once collected in the parking lot (or at the pre-assigned muster point), now is the time to ask. “Is there anything you want from inside the building?”. “What if there were flames coming out of the roof right now?”. “How would you manage today’s critical tasks if this weren’t a drill?”. Note the answers and present it to Senior Leadership, it will show them how (un)prepared the business is in the event of an incident.

12 – Tie BCP to performance reviews/bonuses.

WARNING: this can be controversial. Number 12 is probably the most effective point is this list. We witnessed it with a client when their teams REALLY got back to us with their feedback, they were excited to do the BIA and the planning meetings. All of which is VERY unusual, so we asked what was going on. The CEO had decided they wanted more buy-in. So, the completion of the BCP became part of their performance review. Their performance review dictated their bonuses. This meant we always had everyone’s attention. While this doesn’t save you cash, it does increase the buy-in. Increasing the buy-in makes the job of planning easier without costing the BCP budget anything.

BONUS: it also made BCP part of the culture at the business. Now when we return, BCP rolls off everyone’s tongue! They are comfortable in Business Continuity Planning terminology and goal. This makes the process a lot less “herding cats” or “pushing a rope”.