Step two: Define Your Plan Objectives 

You can start the process of defining your plan objectives by determining your organization's core mission. This is your organization's reason for existence. If you operate a book store, your mission is to sell books. Ask yourself: If you happen to sell bubble gum at the cash register of your book store, which generates more revenue and is more important - the bubble gum or the books? We can all agree the books are more important since selling them is your core mission. Calculating your Recovery Time Objectives and conducting a Business Impact Analysis are important components of your business continuity plan. 

Our Business Continuity Plan Generator will help you easily develop these pieces of your plan. Recovery Time Objectives will need to be developed for every critical process in your business. Because each business is different, you will determine your critical processes. To calculate your Recovery Time Objectives, determine the amount of time you can go without a critical process or system before you start losing revenue or sales. Ask yourself: Have your operations been down for a blizzard? What about a power outage? How many hours? Days? Did you lose sales or revenue? How much? How long can your customers wait before they find another supplier? How much can you budget to recover operations? After identifying your Recovery Time Objectives, determine your Business Impact Analysis by outlining the impact to your business of losing critical processes and systems.