Business Continuity Planning Services
A backup is one part of staying operational. Your team also needs to know what stops first, who makes decisions, how to communicate and which systems must return in what order.
The short answer
Business continuity consulting helps a business decide which activities must keep running during a disruption, what each one depends on and who acts when it stops. NetSys runs a business impact assessment with your process owners, writes continuity procedures with named owners and a communications plan, and exercises the plan with you. Backup implementation, recovery infrastructure and remediation are scoped separately.
Ask a process owner what a day without the billing system would mean. Then ask about a day without the office, a key supplier or the person who approves payments. The answers reveal dependencies that a list of servers cannot show.
Planning works best when operations and IT agree the priorities together. We help translate those priorities into a recovery sequence, contact responsibilities and technology requirements. Your leadership approves business tolerances, staffing decisions and any procedures outside the technical scope.
Exercise the plan and record the gaps
A discussion-based tabletop checks decisions and responsibilities; a technical recovery test checks selected systems. They answer different questions. Agree the scenario, participants, safety boundaries and evidence before each exercise, then assign owners and dates to the gaps it exposes.
What a continuity planning engagement covers
Business impact assessment
Identify the important workflows and the dependencies behind them.
- Interviews with process owners about what a day without each system, site or supplier would mean
- Critical process owners, applications, locations and suppliers
- Agreed interruption tolerances and recovery order
- Technology recovery time and acceptable data-loss objectives
Continuity procedures and owners
Give people a usable sequence of actions and decisions.
- Activation criteria: who can declare a disruption, and on what evidence
- A decision owner and a backup for every critical process
- Fallback work arrangements and technology recovery runbooks
- Escalation contacts for NetSys, your vendors and your carriers
Communications during a disruption
Decide in advance who tells whom, and how, if email is down.
- A contact tree with cell numbers for decision owners, staff and key vendors
- Who speaks to clients, suppliers, your insurer and any regulator
- A fallback channel that does not depend on the systems that failed
- Plan-access arrangements, so the plan can be read during an outage
Testing and plan maintenance
Check whether the documented plan fits the real business, and keep it current.
- Scoped tabletop or technical recovery exercise
- Observed results, assumptions and unresolved dependencies
- Prioritized improvement actions with owners and dates
- Reviews on a set schedule, and after a new system, site, supplier or change in key staff
A plan tied to your workflows and tested assumptions.
Tell us which operations matter most, what recovery arrangements exist and whether a customer or insurer has requested a plan. We will scope the planning, testing and implementation work separately.
Who does the work: meet the NetSys team on our About page.
- Business owners help set priorities instead of inheriting a technical default
- Written responsibilities for decisions, communications and restoration
- Exercises produce an action list rather than an unsupported assurance
Business Continuity Planning in practice
- Logistics and warehousing
Refrigerated food storage operator
Backup and disaster recovery planning for 4 servers, recovery testing, and redundant internet connections across two facilities.
Client names are withheld. Each card is the scope of a real NetSys engagement, as delivered.
Which recovery page you need
This page covers keeping the business operating through a disruption, whatever the cause. The technology recovery behind it is on these pages.
| Page | Use it when |
|---|---|
| This page: Business continuity planning | You need the business to keep operating through a disruption: impact assessment, procedures with owners, communications and exercises. |
| IT disaster recovery | You need systems and data back after an outage or attack: backups, failover, recovery targets and timed restore tests. |
| Microsoft 365 backup | The gap is mail, OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams data that needs a copy outside the tenant. |
| Incident response | You need the first-hour plan for a cyberattack: who decides, who calls whom, and a tabletop that tests it. |
Related pages: IT disaster recovery · Microsoft 365 backup · Incident response.
Business impact assessment: what we record for each process
The business impact assessment is the core of a continuity plan. For every critical process, these fields are filled in with the person who runs it:
| Field | What it captures | Illustrative example |
|---|---|---|
| Process and owner | The activity and the person accountable for it | Payroll, owned by the controller |
| Maximum tolerable downtime | How long the business can go without it before the damage is serious | Three business days before a pay date |
| Recovery time objective | How quickly it must be working again after a disruption | Within one business day |
| Recovery point objective | How much recent data the business can afford to re-enter | No more than one day of changes |
| Dependencies | Systems, people, suppliers and premises it needs | The payroll provider, the bank portal and two trained staff |
| Workaround | How the work continues while the normal way is down | Run the previous period's payroll through the provider's portal |
| Communications | Who is told, by whom and how | Staff by text from the HR lead |
Illustrative entries only. Your tolerances are set by your leadership, and the recovery objectives feed the IT disaster recovery plan.
What a business continuity plan should contain
A plan people can use on a bad day is short and specific. Ours are built around these sections:
- Scope and activation: what counts as a disruption and who can declare one.
- Decision authority and a contact tree with mobile numbers, including deputies.
- Procedures for each critical process, taken from the business impact assessment.
- Where people work if the office is unavailable, and what they need to do it.
- Key supplier contacts and what each has committed to in a disruption.
- Message templates for staff, clients and suppliers.
- The IT recovery order, cross-referenced to the disaster recovery plan.
- The exercise schedule and the date the plan is next reviewed.
Three ways to exercise the plan
A plan that has never been exercised is a draft. Exercises range from a conversation to a real recovery:
| Exercise | What happens | What it proves |
|---|---|---|
| Walkthrough | Each owner reads their section aloud and checks names, numbers and steps | The plan is current and people know their part |
| Tabletop | Leadership works through a scenario, such as ransomware or a lost office, minute by minute | Decisions, communications and gaps between teams |
| Technical recovery test | Systems are restored or failed over and the time is measured | The recovery objectives are achievable |
Business Continuity Planning FAQs
What is included in business continuity consulting?
A business impact assessment with your process owners, a recovery order and recovery objectives for the systems behind each critical process, written continuity procedures with named owners, a communications plan and the exercises the scope calls for, each ending in an action list. Backup changes, recovery infrastructure and remediation are quoted separately, so the plan is not mistaken for the work it recommends.
How does a business continuity engagement start?
With a call about the operations that matter most, the recovery arrangements you already have and whether a customer, insurer or regulator has asked for a plan. We then agree who takes part, which sites and systems are in scope and which existing documents to share through a secure channel. Interviews with process owners for the business impact assessment come next.
Who handles support and escalations during a disruption?
The plan names a decision owner and a backup for each critical process, plus the contact tree used to activate it. NetSys's part depends on your agreement: for managed clients, monitoring and emergency service run 24/7 and the help desk is staffed seven days a week from 4 a.m. to 11 p.m. Eastern time. For a planning-only engagement, the plan states who restores each system, whether that is your team, NetSys or another vendor.
How is business continuity different from disaster recovery?
Business continuity addresses how important operations continue during disruption, including people, locations, suppliers and technology. IT disaster recovery focuses on restoring systems and data. A continuity plan should connect the two so restoration order matches business priorities.
What are RTO and RPO?
Recovery time objective, or RTO, is the target time to restore a service. Recovery point objective, or RPO, describes the acceptable data-loss window. Leadership should agree the business needs, and technical testing should check whether the proposed recovery arrangements can meet them.
Does a cloud backup mean we already have a continuity plan?
No. You still need to know what is covered, who can restore it, what other systems restoration depends on and how people work while recovery happens. Backup design and restore-test results are important inputs to the wider plan.
Can we start with a review of an existing plan?
Yes. Provide the current plan, system inventory and any exercise results through an agreed secure channel. We can scope a review of missing owners, outdated dependencies, unclear recovery priorities and gaps between the document and your current technology.
How much does business continuity consulting cost?
Scope depends on the number of processes, sites, applications and stakeholders, the quality of existing documentation and the exercises required. The proposal separates planning and review from backup changes, recovery infrastructure and remediation. We do not publish a fixed fee that assumes every business has the same needs.
Does the plan guarantee compliance or uninterrupted operation?
No. A plan records priorities and procedures and should be exercised and maintained. It cannot guarantee uninterrupted operations or regulatory acceptance. If a particular standard, insurer or customer requirement applies, provide it so the scope can address the requested evidence.
What is the difference between a business continuity plan and an incident response plan?
An incident response plan covers a cyberattack: who leads, how systems are contained, who calls the insurer and counsel, and what evidence is preserved. A business continuity plan covers keeping the business running through any disruption, whether an attack, a flood, a supplier failure or the loss of key people. The two connect: the continuity plan says how work carries on while the incident response plan deals with the attack itself.
How often should a business continuity plan be tested?
We recommend a walkthrough at least once a year, a tabletop exercise each year with leadership, and a review after any significant change: a new office, a new core system, a change of key supplier or the departure of someone named in the plan. Technical recovery tests follow the disaster recovery testing cadence. Each exercise ends with a short list of fixes, each with an owner and a date.
Who should own the business continuity plan?
A named person in the business, not the IT provider. Usually that is the operations lead, COO or office manager, with deputies for each section. NetSys facilitates the impact assessment, writes and maintains the IT recovery parts, and runs the exercises with you, but decisions about tolerances, staffing and communications belong to leadership, which is why the plan must be owned inside the business.
Do you write continuity plans for businesses outside New York?
Yes. Business impact interviews, plan writing and tabletop exercises run well over video, so we work with businesses anywhere in the United States. The plan reflects the risks where you are, such as hurricane season, winter storms or wildfire smoke, and the suppliers you rely on locally. On-site workshops are available within about 50 miles of our Brooklyn office.
Sources and technical references
Guides on this topic
- Business continuity plan template
- Business continuity vs. disaster recovery
- RTO vs. RPO, explained
- IT disaster recovery and backup implementation
- Cyber incident response planning
- Microsoft 365 backup scope
- IT planning and governance
- hurricane season IT checklist
- Nassau County, NY backup and recovery
- IT Disaster Recovery Plan Template, With a Filled-In Example
Identify what must keep working before the next outage.
Share your critical workflows and current recovery arrangements. We will scope the review, the people who need to take part and the exercises that would be useful.