Business Continuity Plan Template

What Is a Business Continuity Plan?

A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) defines how your organisation will continue operating during and after a disruptive event — whether it is a natural disaster, cyberattack, power outage, or pandemic. For Indian SMEs, a BCP is increasingly required by insurance providers, enterprise clients, and compliance frameworks.

Section 1: Critical Business Functions

List every department and the systems they depend on. Priority 1 functions are those where downtime costs exceed ₹1,00,000 per hour. Priority 2 functions can tolerate 4-8 hours of downtime. Priority 3 functions can tolerate 24+ hours.

For each function, identify: the systems and applications required, minimum staffing needed to operate, dependencies on external vendors, and the maximum tolerable downtime (MTD).

Section 2: Recovery Strategies

Define how each critical system will be recovered:

• Data recovery: Restore from backups. Specify RPO (Recovery Point Objective) — how much data loss is acceptable — and RTO (Recovery Time Objective) — how fast you need to be back online.
• System recovery: Failover to secondary servers, cloud instances, or manual workarounds.
• Work area recovery: If the office is inaccessible, can employees work from home? Is there a backup office location?
• Communication recovery: If email is down, how will you communicate with employees, customers, and vendors?

Section 3: Incident Response Team

Role	Responsibility	Primary	Alternate
Incident Commander	Overall coordination and decision-making	CEO / MD	COO
IT Lead	System recovery and technical response	IT Head	Senior Technician
Communications Lead	Internal and external messaging	HR Head	Marketing Head
Finance Lead	Cost tracking and insurance claims	Finance Head	Accountant
Administrative Lead	Facilities, supplies, and logistics	Admin Manager	Office Manager

Section 4: Communication Protocols

Define: primary and backup communication channels (WhatsApp group, SMS broadcast, phone tree, Slack), escalation triggers and contact order, pre-approved messaging templates for customer and vendor notifications, and media handling procedures (if applicable).

Section 5: Testing & Review Schedule

Test your BCP tabletop (walkthrough) quarterly. Conduct a full simulation drill annually. Update the plan after any major infrastructure change, team restructuring, or after every real incident. The BCP is a living document — if it sits in a drawer for 12 months untouched, it will fail when you need it.