How to Gain Approval for Your Plan

The first step toward implementing your business continuity plan $($BCP$)$ lies in gaining executive management's

wholehearted support. You can't wait to win this approval until after you've drawn up and presented your plan to

management. You must make clear to management from the beginning the costs associated with any lasting

disruptions to business and the pressing need for every business to have a BCP to protect itself.

To win executive management's endorsement of your BCP$,$ research the costs associated with business

disruptions, the costs of implementing a business continuity plan, and the steps for continuity and recovery that

are specific to your organization, and then use this data to strengthen the arguments for implementing your plan.

Also, ask management what it is looking for. Understand the executives' short$-$ and long$-$term concerns and what

concrete benefits they are looking for from a BCP$.$ Find out as well how much they are willing and able to invest in

such a plan. Remind them that while a BCP requires ongoing upgrades, which will also come with a price tag, to go

without such a plan and its upgrades could result in even longer and far costlier business disruptions.

To win executive management support takes proper planning. Too many well$-$intentioned managers and

consultants devote all their time to their plan's presentation and not enough time consulting with management.

Use information from your conversations with management to plan your approach, presentation materials, and

time. Remember, you'll likely get just one try at this.

Standards

Does this policy point to any hardware, software, or configuration standards? In this case, you need to reference

the recovery time objectives $($RTOs$)$ and recovery point objectives $($RPOs$)$ as standards and metrics. List them here

and explain the relationship of this policy to these standards.

Procedures

Explain how you intend to implement this policy across the entire organization.

Guidelines

Explain any roadblocks or implementation issues that you must address in this section and how you will overcome

them per defined policy guidelines.