Business Continuity Planning and Disaster Recovery Planning are the terms which are quite different from each other. These need to be well understood when plans are made for dealing with any major event by an organization.

2/5th of the companies facing a major disaster fail to recover back to their original state. The survivors then gradually leave the business with due course of time.

In the event of occurrence of a disaster and after it, the processes that an organization carries out in order to ensure the continuity of the important business functions is termed as the Business continuity plan. The Business Continuity Planning plays a vital role in protecting the mission-critical services and ensure their survival chances. Such a planning which covers almost all the critical business processes and functionalities of an organization is necessary for the re-establishment of the services quickly in a smoother way.

A series of Disaster Recovery Plans (DRP) forms a smaller part of business continuity process. DRP is usually technical in nature and developed for particular groups in the organization. This helps in recovery of a particular business application such as IT DR plan for technology services. Data replication is done for disaster recovery so that it can be accessed in case of a disaster.

After this, the business units need to plan for subsequent functions through the development of Business Continuity Plan. This will help in recovering vital records, identification of critical suppliers, contacting of key vendors and clients etc. The company disaster recovery plan includes response to the incident, response in case of an emergency, assessment of damage, plans for evacuation etc.

The recovery time is an important factor in the recovery planning as it determines the quickness of resumption of the normal functionality.

Summing up, we can say that BCP is meant for ensuring delivery of the services in a usual way in case of a disaster but DRP deals with the functions that need to be carried out soon after the occurrence of a disaster in order to recover from the event

Business Continuity Planning is a broader aspect involving the management oversight, i.e it is business-centric and continuity in nature, for smooth flow of the business operations but Disaster Recovery Planning is data-centric and preventive in nature. The ability of the Business Continuity Planning to reduce their downtime, thus preventing the company from going offline, determines its grade.