A business continuity plan (BCP) sample shows what a completed BCP should look like before you build your own. Instead of starting from scratch, you can review how recovery strategies, communication procedures, and operational dependencies are structured in a practical plan.
This page explains what a BCP sample includes, how to use one properly, and how to turn a basic example into a complete, working solution.
A sample becomes much more useful when it is supported by a threat risk assessment and a clear business impact analysis.
For a broader preparedness reference, Ready.gov also outlines the core elements of business continuity planning.
If you want more than a static example, SHIELD business continuity planning software gives teams a complete, customizable sample plan they can adapt, maintain, and improve over time.
A useful business continuity plan sample reflects how an organization actually operates during a disruption. It should include:
If these elements are missing, the sample won’t translate into a usable plan.
The purpose of the sample is to show how these pieces work together, not to create a document that looks complete but fails during an incident. A useful BCP connects the risk assessment, business impact analysis, recovery priorities, roles, procedures, communications, and maintenance activities into one practical recovery tool.
A BCP sample and a BCP template serve different purposes:
Most organizations need both. The sample provides context, while the template is what you use to build your plan.
A sample should guide your approach—not be copied directly.
Use it to:
Then adapt everything. Your organization’s risks, systems, and priorities are different.
Organizations often misuse BCP samples. Common issues include:
A sample is a starting point—not a solution.
A sample helps you understand structure. A complete plan requires analysis and customization.
A typical 5 step process includes:
Static documents and generic samples don’t hold up during real disruptions.
KingsBridgeBCP SHIELD provides a structured platform to build, manage, and maintain your business continuity plan:
A BCP sample is an example of a completed or partially completed plan that shows how recovery strategies, roles, and procedures are documented.
It should include critical functions, recovery priorities, communication procedures, IT recovery steps, dependencies, and testing processes.
No. A sample shows the end result. A template is what you fill out.
Yes, but it must be customized. A generic plan will not work during an actual disruption.
Yes, but most free samples are generic. A structured framework is more effective for building a usable plan.
A business continuity plan template should do more than give you headings to fill in. It should guide you through the information, decisions and recovery procedures your organization needs before a disruption occurs.
Many templates are delivered as static Word documents or spreadsheets. They may be easy to download, but they can become difficult to organize, update and maintain as your business changes. A useful template should help you build a working business continuity plan—not merely create another document that will be forgotten in a folder.
SHIELD Free places the template inside a structured business continuity planning environment. For a very small business, the Free edition may provide everything needed to get started. Larger organizations can use it to explore the SHIELD template and planning process before deciding whether another edition would better suit their needs.
Starting from a blank page makes business continuity planning harder than it needs to be. Important information can be missed, different departments may document their plans inconsistently, and the finished plan can be difficult to use during an actual disruption.
A well-designed BCP template provides a common structure. It prompts you to identify what must be protected, how quickly it must be recovered, who is responsible and what resources will be required.
The template does not make the decisions for you. It makes the planning process easier to understand and helps ensure that important questions are considered before an emergency.
If you are new to the planning process, our guide to the steps for creating a business continuity plan explains how those decisions fit together.
A template and a sample serve two different purposes.
A business continuity plan template provides the structure used to create your own plan. It contains the sections, prompts and planning framework that help you collect and organize information about your organization.
A business continuity plan sample shows what completed planning information might look like. It can help you understand the level of detail to include and how the different parts of a completed plan work together.
Use a sample to understand the finished result. Use a template to build the plan for your own organization.
You can review our business continuity plan sample before beginning your own plan in SHIELD.
Every organization is different, but an effective template should help you identify and document the following areas.
Your plan should identify the products, services and activities the organization must restore first. It should also help you determine how long each activity can be unavailable before the consequences become unacceptable.
A useful template identifies who will make decisions, coordinate recovery activities and communicate with employees, customers, suppliers and other stakeholders. Responsibilities should be clear before an incident occurs.
Business activities depend on workplaces, equipment, applications, data, utilities and external services. Your template should help you record those dependencies and consider practical alternatives when something is unavailable.
Critical suppliers, service providers and partners should be documented along with contact details, dependencies and possible alternatives. A plan that considers only internal operations can leave a significant recovery gap.
Your template should help connect disruptive events with their possible operational consequences. This creates a stronger foundation for recovery strategies and helps ensure that limited planning resources are focused where they matter most.
Recovery information should be practical enough to use under pressure. The plan should explain what needs to happen, who is responsible, what resources are required and how progress will be communicated.
A business continuity plan is not finished when the first draft is written. The template should support regular reviews, exercises and updates so that the plan continues to reflect the organization.
A Word document can be a reasonable place to sketch an early plan, particularly for a very small organization. The difficulty begins when the plan grows or several people become responsible for maintaining it.
Static documents can create familiar problems:
The issue is not that a Word template lacks headings. The issue is that a business continuity plan must remain current, organized and usable after those headings have been completed.
SHIELD places the business continuity plan template inside the software used to build and maintain the plan. Instead of starting with disconnected files, you work through a structured planning environment and adapt the supplied content to your organization.
SHIELD Free currently includes more than 50 pages of business recovery plan template content, five sample teams, document storage, access to the Quick Start Guide and SHIELD Mobile, and user access suitable for a small planning team.
It is free with no credit card and no expiry. The goal is to let you do useful planning—not simply view a product demonstration.
For a very small business, SHIELD Free may be sufficient. If your organization has more teams, more complex dependencies or broader planning requirements, the Free edition provides a practical way to understand the SHIELD approach before considering another edition.
SHIELD Free is a good starting point when your organization:
The important question is not whether a free template contains every possible feature. It is whether the template helps you create a plan that reflects your organization and can be maintained over time.
If SHIELD Free continues to meet those needs, you can continue using it. If your planning requirements grow, you will already understand the platform and be in a better position to evaluate the additional SHIELD editions.
Before choosing any business continuity plan template, ask:
A good template should make planning simpler without reducing the plan to a generic checklist. It should give you a reliable starting point while leaving room for the decisions that only your organization can make.
Downloading a template can feel like progress. The more important step is turning that template into a plan your organization can use.
SHIELD Free gives you a structured business continuity plan template and a practical environment in which to complete it. It can serve as the planning solution for a very small business or as a straightforward way to experience SHIELD before deciding whether your organization needs more.
See what SHIELD Free includes and start building your plan.
Nobody likes a headache, especially a Business Continuity Planning (BCP) headache...
Is your head spinning from trying to get a copy of your plan to everyone that needs it? Are you worried about ensuring that access to sensitive information remains restricted? Dive into this blog post to uncover the secrets to using BCP software solutions to cure all of your BCP headaches. Lucky for you, KingsBridge’s SHIELD software can provide the same relief as Advil!
Access to a Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is critical when disaster strikes. To ensure this, many companies periodically print and distribute their plans to their recovery team members. A wide plan distribution is great to make sure everyone has the information they need. The risk, however, is when old copies of the plans remain in circulation.
Web-based software solutions eliminate the risk of old, stale copies floating around while ensuring users have access to the latest, most current information. In SHIELD, all changes are immediately reflected in the plan, allowing users with access to view them right away. No need to print and distribute.
Hosting your BCP electronically makes editing and distribution a breeze! But what happens if your server room is destroyed during a disaster? How will you access your plan if you can’t get to an internet connection?
iOS and Android mobile apps like SHIELD Mobile allow you to download a local copy of your plan to your mobile device. Even if you don’t have an internet connection or cell service, your plan and any attached documents are easily accessible. Now you can get your business back up and running, perhaps by starting with restoring your internet connection!
In principle, sharing your BCP widely to ensure everyone has access to it is great. The challenge comes when there is sensitive information in the plan that some people just shouldn’t see. Paper documents with sensitive information in them are a major security risk. There is an even greater risk when documents are stored in the trunk of a manager’s vehicle or a home filing cabinet.
Choosing to host your BCP electronically allows you to select exactly which team members should see what. With SHIELD’s team-based permissions, you can grant access to only the parts of the plan that are relevant to a specific team/user. For example, your Facilities Team doesn’t need to see the payroll, and your Sales Team doesn’t need access to your Board of Directors’ contact information
Although restricted access is great for your recovery teams, there are always a handful of people that want or need to see EVERYTHING. Senior management may need to see the whole plan to sign off on the content. You may also have auditors that need to see the whole plan to verify that you’re meeting their requirements.
With BCP software, you can provide auditors and senior management with a full view of your plan without the concern that they will change something they shouldn’t. For example, SHIELD offers Auditor access, enabling users to view all content in the plan without permitting any edits. Additionally, Administrator access provides select users with full access to read, edit, and manage permissions within the plan.
Starting BCP can seem like a daunting task; knowing where to begin can be the hardest part. Often senior management assigns plan development to an employee with no experience or resources to complete the job.
At KingsBridge, we want to take that first step for you. Our SHIELD software comes with hundreds of pages of content templates for every type of recovery team you can imagine. We also have specialized templates for credit unions or for those who want to follow the FEMA format. From recommendations on getting started to tips for exercising your completed plan, SHIELD doesn’t just house your plan, it writes a lot of it for you!
We recognize that Business Continuity might not be the number one priority of everyone in your organization. You orient staff to the software but then they never touch it again. As a result, when users log in, it’s like a whole new experience, every time.
To help re-orient our infrequent users, our BCP Wizard will walk them through the core components of SHIELD. The first time they log in, the Wizard will be front and center, prompting them to take a guided tour of the software. After this initial walk-through, the Wizard tutorials can still be easily accessed whenever a refresher is needed.
The more comprehensive your BCP becomes the more material it includes. This can make it daunting for users to find the reference documents or procedures they need to complete a particular step in their recovery. At KingsBridge, we perform gap analyses on BCPs, so we’re all too familiar with giant appendices. Just finding the information you need in a pile of documents you don’t use every day can be a challenge.
To solve this problem, we implemented a simple and secure navigation solution in SHIELD: hyperlinks. You can create a hyperlink from any group of words directly to a document, report, section, or website. A user simply clicks the hyperlink and they are directed to the target. No more flipping through appendices!
Being able to communicate quickly and efficiently with all staff is critical to smoothly mitigating and/or recovering from an incident. There are many mass notification tools on the market, but they often have so many bells and whistles that getting comfortable with using them is a hurdle. Sending an urgent notification to all staff is not something that happens on a regular basis–at least you hope not–so it’s important that the tool you choose is intuitive and easy to use.
Following our Simple & Secure BCP philosophy, we decided to build an easy-to-use notification tool (SHIELD Communications) right into our software. There is no need to train your users on yet another application or maintain a separate database of contact information. Once a user with notification permissions logs into SHIELD, simple and secure notifications are at their fingertips.
Keeping contact information up-to-date is one of the most challenging yet most important parts of a reliable BCP. Just keeping personnel information current is challenging enough, but what about all those vendors you need to be able to reach out to if disaster strikes?
Trying to update information in more than one place is unreliable and only makes for extra work. In SHIELD, you can skip the extra work and import information directly from other data sources. With an extract from your HR database or your vendor management system, our software is equipped with import and merge functions that allow you to pull new information in with just a few clicks. No more editing row after row. Simply choose your method of importing, and SHIELD does the rest!
Global changes to your BCP can be a nightmare. Whether it’s a company name change, a new address, or a major software update, there can be a lot of reasons to make significant changes to your plan. Sure, “Find and Replace” can work for some things but then you have to redo the table of contents, create new PDF copies, and redistribute the plan…again.
With SHIELD, global changes are easy with the Plan Markup table. This table is home to the frequently used terms and phrases throughout your BCP. For example, your company name or address. If any of these terms or phrases change, simply updating the item in the Plan Markup table will automatically change it throughout your plan. Think of it like "Find and Replace" on steroids.
BCPs are one of those things that impact every part of an organization. As a result, there is a lot of communication that needs to take place between you, the plan owner, and all of the other departments that contribute and review the plan content. With so many people involved, it can be a challenge to track who has done what.
Software tools can make it easier to assign and manage tasks. SHIELD has a built-in management tool that allows you to assign tasks to plan contributors and gives you a dashboard view of who has and has not completed their assignments. Contributors can be automatically emailed to let them know when a task has been assigned to them, and you will receive an email when the task has been completed and is ready for your review.
Having a BCP has become a common requirement for many businesses, which means it often needs a review once complete. One risk to using an online tool is the challenge in sharing that web-based content with someone who is outside of your organization. How do you share your completed plan without sharing sensitive information?
The answer is custom publishing. The content in SHIELD is structured as a series of sections and subsections. With custom publishing, you just select the sections you want to include in a published copy of your plan. Once you click ‘Publish’, a PDF of that content is automatically created, complete with a cover page and table of contents. Each publication can be different than the one before so you can have a PDF copy of your plan to meet any need.
We hope you’ve enjoyed this post on how you can address your BCP headaches!
Lots of things in this world purport to be free, but few truly are. At KingsBridge, we offer four versions of our easy-to-use SHIELD software. One is free. Truly - no cost. You don't need a budget because with it, you can build your Business Continuity Plan (BCP) entirely for free. Not only that, but we give you plenty of storage AND secure access to your plan from your phone or tablet using SHIELD Mobile. All for free.
Getting started doesn't have to be intimidating. First, identify where you are at:
1 - Are you wondering if BCP is even worth it? Start with our Return on Investment (ROI) calculator. It'll help you build a budget and value for your BCP project.
2 - Next is to prepare yourself for dealing with the rejection from Senior Management (COVID is a blip, right?). Our "Jump the Hurdles" webinar will get you prepared!
3 - Step 3 is to arm yourself with knowledge! Who says there isn't free knowledge?!? Our own knowledge section of our website is an excellent resource for all things BCP knowledge related.
3a - Download the Start using SHIELD Free (don't worry, SHIELD Mobile will sync with it).
4 - If you're already familiar with the principles of Business Continuity, you can dive right into our SHIELD Quick Start Guide.
5 - Want to be sure you've got all the bases covered? No worries, our Ultimate BCP checklist will help make sure you haven't missed anything.
If you are not sure what your finished plan should look like, start by reviewing our business continuity plan sample. It shows how the main pieces of a BCP fit together before you begin building your own.
If you need any help during your plan-building process, you can go to our Support page for answers to common questions as well as support documentation.
Need more? We'd love to hear from you!
KingsBridge is Simple & Secure Business Continuity Planning (#KISSBCP). Everything we do revolves around that value and we firmly believe that everyone should be able to prepare for the next incident or disaster that's coming.
You’ve invested so much, poured your heart and soul (and countless hours!) into your business. Why would you take the risk of losing it all when the unexpected happens.
At KingsBridge we recognize that, while we use SHIELD every day and are very familiar with its layout, you have other competing priorities. When you do have a chance to log in, you might need a couple of minutes to refresh your memory as to where to find everything. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was something (or someone) who could lead you through the process? There is! The SHIELD Wizard makes it easy to perform a number of functions within SHIELD.
If you’re also responsible for maintaining the Business Continuity Program in your organization, you have added responsibilities! In addition to maintaining the plan so it is ready in the event of an incident, you’re also responsible for making sure everyone else can access the plan. Let the SHIELD Wizard take some of the load and step your teams through mundane things (like resetting their password).
The SHIELD Wizard is your Business Continuity Planning (BCP) assistant and it's available 24/7 to make sure you (and your teams) complete tasks with the least amount of uncertainty possible. If you are building/updating your plan and want to know how to upload your personnel data, just follow the Wizard. Simply click on the blue question mark in the corner, select “Uploading Personnel to the Personnel Table” and follow the prompts. Before you know it, your personnel table is up-to-date and you didn't have to watch any videos or read a manual! The Wizard has stepped you through the process and your task is done in seconds!
The Wizard knows your Read Only users won’t be updating personnel, so it presents them with a list of functions they need most often:
The Wizard knows the administrator uses SHIELD more frequently and requires more advanced functionality. As a result, the Wizard presents the Administrator with a list of more robust functions:
The Wizard jumps to attention when a user logs in to SHIELD - you don’t have to go looking for it. If you’ve dismissed the Wizard, it’s always available in the lower right-hand corner in case you need it - just click on the blue question mark, select the function you are trying to complete, and the Wizard will quickly step you through the process making you a more efficient Planner, able to return to your other duties.
The SHIELD Wizard is just another reason KingsBridge SHIELD is the easiest-to-use BCP software available.
