Developing a Business Continuity Plan to Build Resilience

By Dr. Matthew Loux and Bryce Loux  |  10/15/2025

Organizations today are constantly under threat. These threats commonly take various forms, such as:

• Cyberattacks
• Data breaches
• Natural disasters
• Power outages
• Global pandemics

For unprepared companies, any business disruption can be extremely detrimental, causing severe financial impact, harming a company’s reputation, and forcing closure. Consequently, developing a business continuity plan (BCP) is essential.

A business continuity plan focuses on ensuring critical business functions and essential services. It allows an organization to continue business operations with minimal friction, even during and after an unexpected event. A business continuity plan also safeguards the entire organization from potential liability and helps managers to mitigate risks.

The Basics of an Effective Business Continuity Plan

Before developing a business continuity plan, it is vital to understand its basic elements. Business continuity plans are contingency frameworks devised to ensure that business activities and key processes are maintained seamlessly. These operations involve people, facilities, and technology.

To prepare a business continuity plan, it is necessary to perform several basic actions, such as:

• Conducting a business impact analysis
• Performing a risk assessment
• Defining recovery objectives
• Developing response and communication plans
• Establishing backups
• Creating recovery strategies for disaster scenarios
• Assigning roles and training staff 
• Running regular tests on the business continuity plans 

Conducting a Business Impact Analysis

Every organization needs a business impact analysis as a part of the overall business continuity planning process and recovery planning. The analysis normally consists of these key components:

• Critical business processes – customer service, payroll, and supply chain management
• Dependencies – Information technology, personnel, facilities, vendors, key suppliers, and key stakeholders
• Downtime – any downtime has a financial impact, creates legal issues, and damages a company’s reputation

A good example is ecommerce companies. If an ecommerce company is offline for 24 hours due to IT infrastructure problems, for instance, that outage may cost millions in sales, create higher costs to recover, and damage customer goodwill.

Ideally, senior management, business partners, and human resources should be involved in a business impact analysis to ensure no important process is missed and to identify gaps.

Performing a Risk Assessment

After knowing the most critical components of the business, the next step is to analyze what threatens those components. The risks include:

• Cyber threats – ransomware and phishing can test disaster preparedness
• Natural disasters – hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes require coordination with emergency management and emergency responders
• Human issues – employee mistakes and labor strikes interfere with business operations and essential services
• Technology failures – crashing servers and network outages impede transactions and documents

For a risk assessment, plan multiple approaches to gather information. For example, compute a “risk score” using probability, potential impact, and potential threats. This tactic helps business units and the continuity team invest time where it matters most for the entire organization.

Defining Recovery Objectives

To recover from any disaster, recovery objectives need to be defined, such as:

• Recovery time objective (RTO) – The maximum downtime a business process can accept (such as hours or days), which is used to minimize downtime while balancing higher costs.
• Recovery point objective (RPO) – The maximum data loss a business can accept, which can be measured in minutes, hours, or days

For example, trading systems for a financial services firm often set a 1-hour RTO and 15-minute RPO. Losing data and going offline during this period would be quite costly.

It makes more sense to set RTO and RPO for each critical system of the organization instead of a company-wide setting. That way, they can be aligned with recovery priorities and are a part of both a sound business continuity plan and disaster recovery plan.

Developing Response and Communication Plans 

In a disaster scenario, effective communication in an emergency is crucial for everyone – business leaders, key employees, and the continuity team. A communication plan should have: 

• Procedures for notification, including the contacts and methods of reach
• Active roles and duties for employees to perform during disruptions to key areas of the business
• Communication and public relations policies that address the issue for customers, vendors, and the press

To prevent conflicting statements, it’s crucial to designate primary contacts for each group. Create crisis templates for customer and account holder emails, social media engagement, and press materials to expedite the response time.

Establishing Backups

When disaster strikes, backups are vital. These backups can be folded into a disaster recovery plan and consist of: 

• Data storage – cloud servers and on-site storage areas can be used for documents and data backups
• Remote work policies and secondary office locations – both can be backup sites and serve as alternate work sites if necessary
• Equipment – Multiple internet connections, power sources, and servers are helpful in case of any problems

Ideally, apply the 3-2-1 backup rule. Keep three copies of your data on two different media and store one copy in an off-site location.

Creating Recovery Strategies for Disaster Scenarios 

With these plans, a company can get back on its feet almost immediately after an unforeseen incident: 

• Cold sites – Backup locations that lack operational capacity but have essential framework components
• Warm sites – Partially equipped spaces that are ready to be fully equipped
• Hot sites – A complete replica of active systems that allow for almost immediate switchover
• Cloud recovery systems – The use of cloud servers to recover systems in hours or minutes

Choose an approach that fits your RTO and RPO expectations. However, also keep budget considerations in mind; this consideration is especially important for small businesses that may have a smaller budget.

Assigning Roles and Training Staff 

Business continuity plans are only as good as their execution. For a plan to work, the staff of different business units need to be trained on: 

• Accessing company plans and resources 
• Accessing emergency protocols and procedures 
• Accessing crisis manuals 

Coaching teams through approaches to resolving disruptions is an effective strategy for ensuring the seamless operation of a company.

Running Regular Tests on Business Continuity Plans 

Plans that are stored away and unused on a shelf are pointless. Regular testing of business continuity plans ensures they are up to date. Some common testing methods for testing business recovery are: 

• Tabletop exercises – Walkthroughs of different scenarios in a location such as a conference room
• Simulation exercises – Power outages and cyberattacks are simulated in real time to test employees' reactions
• Full-scale tests – Operational shutdowns to assess the level of preparedness of different business functions

Continuity and recovery plans need to be regularly maintained by employees for them to be useful and effective. Regular testing of business functions should be documented and updated to reflect any lessons learned. The testing will also ensure potential risks are addressed before disaster strikes.

Environments, technologies, and business threats are constantly evolving. Plans need to be changed or reviewed whenever there is a significant change in the business, such as:

• Incidents, especially events that require quick emergency response
• Relocations
• Tech upgrades
• Changing regulatory requirements
• Adoption of new business models

Ideally, appoint a continuity manager or a team of other employees to guarantee updates and to make plans more relevant. Also, increase the documentation of test results and adjust outdated plans rather than repeating the same test without changes.

Regular Updates and Maintenance Are Essential 

Business risks and environments shift all the time. A business continuity plan made five years ago is often outdated and ineffective today.

Mid to long-term strategies are essential for a business and its employees to react properly to recent events. Similarly, reporting, documenting, and maintaining process changes are important when there are structural changes like a new office, a location expansion, and mergers. 

Some factors to consider are:

• Upgrades in technology such as new software or cloud migrations
• Changes in compliance
• Reviews after a disaster

There should be a continuity manager to monitor and manage ongoing changes. Another option is to use a dedicated team.

Making the Most of Technology and Automation

Advances in cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and automation have changed the way organizations protect and restore their operations.

Distributed systems, as well as cloud-based backups, help maintain business continuity even when physical locations are compromised after an incident such as a natural disaster. Automated failover and incident management systems also reduce downtime and encourage customer trust.

Despite the benefits, technology is not without its downsides. Automated tools can create workflows without supervision, which may pose a security risk. Interpretation and decision-making require a human touch.

The need for continuous security and careful planning must be embedded into a continuity plan. Organizations need to be proactive and invest in continuous monitoring and ongoing risk assessment to keep up with change.

Advancements in technology can ease continuity and recovery tasks, which include:

• Backups that are cloud-based for added security and flexible scaling
• Systems for automated failover that suspend primary servers and transfer operations to secondary servers during outages
• Software that coordinates responses to incidents in real time

To prevent an overreliance on technology, strike a balance between automated systems and human control.

Foster a Culture of Resilience 

No single plan or technology can singlehandedly safeguard an organization. The best businesses actively cultivate a culture that balances preparedness with flexibility.

Leaders must:

• Promote awareness of disaster recovery and business continuity
• Incentivize proactive risk mitigation
• Praise employees who flag problems or propose changes

Business resilience should be a core value, not just a checklist of steps. To aid this goal, employers should provide ongoing resilience training.

They should also foster confidence and mastery with methods like scenario-based learning and cross-functional gamified drills. In addition, sharing real-world wins and failures through storytelling strengthens an internal culture and enables preparedness at all levels.

Creating a resilient culture is a quest that will take time.  Leaders should make resilience a part of everyday business operations and celebrate teams that anticipate risks, develop solutions, and work effectively under pressure.

Building Resilience for the Future

Disruptions can greatly shift the timeline and the path we were initially set to be on. That is why is why a business continuity plan provides stabilization and assurance – it is far more than a policy.

Planning for survival in modern times is no longer an “if”; it is a “when.” Keeping business continuity planning at the top of the priority list makes for sustainability and is an ongoing business imperative.

The MBA at APU

Adult learners interested in learning about business continuity planning, strategic management, and other aspects of business may wish to pursue American Public University’s online Master of Business Administration. In this degree program, students can take courses such as artificial intelligence practices in business, strategic management, and legal and ethical issues in management. Other courses include managerial economics and corporate finance.

Student can also choose from one of 18 concentrations to enable them to tailor their education to meet professional goals. The operational crisis management concentration offers courses in business continuity, sustainability and crisis management, and crisis action planning.

This MBA has been awarded specialty accreditation from the Accreditation Council for Business Schools and Programs (ACBSP®). This accreditation demonstrates that the MBA degree program is held to high academic standards by higher education professionals.

For more information about this program, visit APU’s business and management degree program page.

ACBSP is a registered trademark of the Accreditation Council for Business Schools and Programs.