In today's unpredictable business landscape, having a solid business continuity plan (BCP) is no longer optional—it's essential. From natural disasters to cyberattacks, businesses face a range of potential disruptions. A well-crafted BCP ensures that your organization can weather these storms, minimizing downtime and protecting critical functions.

Learn how to create a business continuity plan to ensure your organization can navigate crises and unexpected disruptions. This tutorial will guide you through defining objectives, identifying risks, and crafting strategies to safeguard operations using Claude for efficiency and precision.

In this step-by-step guide, you’ll learn how to:

1. Establish business continuity goals
2. Identify key assets and vulnerabilities
3. Analyze potential risks
4. Develop effective response and recovery plans
5. Compile a comprehensive business continuity plan

In this tutorial, we will take the example of Techpresso, which I know enough to be able to know if what is going to be said by Claude is bullshit or not.

By the end of this tutorial, you'll have a robust continuity plan that addresses potential disruptions and ensures operational stability, with the help of Claude for guidance.

Define your business continuity goals

Your continuity plan begins by setting clear, actionable goals. These will shape how your organization prepares for and responds to disruptions. By defining your objectives, you’ll identify key areas of focus.

Use this prompt in Claude:

Analyze my business details and recommend continuity objectives:

Business: [Business Name]
Sector: [Industry]
Employees: [Number of Employees]
Key products/services: [List]
Key customer segments: [Segments]
Primary revenue sources: [Revenue streams]
Locations: [Locations]
Main threats: [Primary risks]

Provide:
1. 3-5 major business continuity objectives
2. Critical business functions to focus on
3. Regulatory factors to consider
4. Recommended timeline for plan creation

💡 Tip: Focus on the specific areas critical to your business survival, such as maintaining essential services and ensuring data protection.

Identify critical assets and vulnerabilities

Once your goals are defined, it's essential to identify the core assets your business depends on. This can range from your IT infrastructure and data to key personnel. At this stage, you'll also map vulnerabilities that could be exploited during a disruption.

Claude Prompt:

List critical assets and vulnerabilities in my business:

Please provide:
1. Essential assets (e.g., IT systems, staff, inventory)
2. Vulnerabilities for each asset
3. Impact estimation if each asset is compromised
4. Dependencies between assets
5. Existing security measures

💡 Tip: Be sure to include "low-probability, high-impact" events in your vulnerability assessment to cover every angle.

Conduct a risk assessment

Next, it's time to evaluate the risks that could threaten your business. From natural disasters to cyberattacks, it’s important to assess the likelihood of these events and their potential impact on operations.

Prompt Claude:

Perform a risk assessment and impact analysis:

Identify:
1. Top 5 risks based on our industry and location
2. Likelihood and impact of each risk
3. Financial impact per day if disrupted
4. Reputational risks associated
5. Recovery Time Objective (RTO) for key functions
6. Recovery Point Objective (RPO) for data

💡 Tip: A good risk analysis will also consider both external and internal threats, ensuring that you’re prepared for all contingencies.

Create Response and Recovery Strategies

Now that you’ve identified the risks, the next step is to plan how your business will respond. Claude will help you craft strategies for immediate response and long-term recovery, ensuring that critical functions can resume swiftly.

Prompt Claude:

Develop targeted response and recovery strategies:

For each of the top 5 risks, provide:
1. Immediate response steps
2. Detailed recovery procedures
3. Contingency work arrangements
4. Communication protocols
5. Resource allocation strategies
6. Financial and reputational protection methods

💡 Tip: Prioritize communication during a crisis. Clear internal and external communication can help mitigate damage to your brand’s reputation.

Build and test your business continuity plan

Finally, you’ll compile everything into a comprehensive document. This will serve as the go-to resource for your team during any crisis. Once your plan is created, regularly test and update it to keep it relevant.

Prompt Claude:

Generate a complete business continuity plan:

The plan should include:
1. Executive summary
2. Overview of business objectives
3. Critical functions and assets
4. Risk and impact analysis
5. Response and recovery strategies
6. Roles and responsibilities

💡 Tip: Break your plan into modules that can be easily updated, and organize regular drills to test its effectiveness.

Conclusion

With Claude, you can streamline the development of a business continuity plan, ensuring it’s both comprehensive and actionable. This tutorial has provided a clear framework to define your objectives, assess risks, and design effective strategies to protect your business from disruptions.