During the BCP process, the business will be broken down into functions which can then be prioritized from the mission-critical to the non-mission critical.

Those functions that are deemed to be mission-critical should have recovery plans in place to minimize the effects of a disruption or disaster. The functional plan is a component of the BC plan and focuses on a specific mission critical function of the business. Issues that should be addressed in a functional plan are:

• Key personnel needed for recovery.
• Key vendor and customer contact information.
• Off-site procedures and inventory lists.
• Prioritized recovery resource list.
• General operating procedures.

Personnel...

Key functional support personnel should be identified and notified of their roles and responsibilities in a recovery situation. Whenever possible, an alternate person should be enlisted as a backup to the primary contact. All support personnel contact information should be gathered, documented, and stored with the recovery plan off-site.

Vendors and Customer Contact Information...

Critical support vendors and customer contact information should be documented along with contact names, locations information, and alternate vendor information for each.

Off-Site Procedures...

If off-site facilities are used to store critical data or equipment, all procedures for rotations, deliveries and retrievals should be documented in the plan. The off-site vendor contact information for both normal business hours and after hours should be documented as well.

Resource List...

This information should have been collected during the BIA but needs to be available during the recovery to ensure that all essential resources are available. In an emergency situation some or all of the regular personnel in a department may be unavailable for a recovery, thereby making the resource list critical to the recovery of the business function.

Operating Procedures...

General operating procedures should be documented for each department so that someone from outside the department could potentially perform the recovery.