Using a template to develop a business continuity plan (BCP) is not cheating! It’s the sensible way to approach the development of a business continuity plan. A business continuity plan template can streamline the business continuity plan development process, improve the overall quality and effectiveness of the business continuity plan and significantly increase your capability to produce a business continuity plan that will meet the expectation of third parties such as you customers, auditors and regulators

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1. Ease of use

A well-structured business continuity plan template will help you to break down the process of business continuity plan development into bite size chunks. Ideally, the template should provide you with the best tools for the job (like a spreadsheet for some stages, document templates for another). 

2. Reduces time to develop 
The structured framework provided by a business continuity template, avoids the need to start your business continuity plan development in a vacuum. This allows businesses to focus on customizing content rather than designing the format or deciding what sections to include.

3. Ensures Comprehensive Coverage
Templates should be based on meeting industry standards and best practices, that the key stages of business continuity plan development (e.g., risk assessment, recovery strategies, communication plans) are not overlooked and are comprehensively completed.
This reduces the risk of missing important parts of the plan that could compromise the effectiveness of the plan and/or result in negative audit results.

4. Standardisation
Templates ensure consistency of approach throughout the organisation, ensuring that all teams follow the same approach, making the plan easier to understand, implement, and audit.

5. Improved Collaboration
A predefined structure helps different parts of the organisation to develop their individual response plans (e.g., IT, HR, operations) contribute specific sections more effectively. Teams can work on their respective parts of the business continuity plan without confusion about format or required content.

6. Simplifies Updates and Maintenance
Using a template ensures that the structure remains consistent over time, making it easier to update the plan as business needs, risks, or regulations change. Ongoing business continuity plan maintenance is an important consideration when evaluating business continuity plan templates. A template that provides the appropriate tools and formats for each stage of the business continuity plan activity, gives a plan that is much easier to maintain in the long run. For example, a risk assessment needs to consolidate information so that the “big picture” can be seen, a department response plan needs a completely different structure, requiring a well formatted document template– because its’ primary purpose is for guidance and reference in a crisis. 
Put simply, business continuity plan template based one large, single document is not sufficiently flexible to create  a maintainable business continuity plan

7. Reduces Errors
Well-designed business continuity plan templates will include support, checklists and guidance that helps to guide users, reducing the likelihood of errors or omissions. A well designed will help business continuity plan developers to capture the correct information, avoiding omissions

8. Cost-Effectiveness
Pre-designed templates, especially if obtained from reliable sources, are a cost-effective way to build a professional and thorough business continuity plan
They can be reused and adapted for different scenarios, saving resources over time.

9. Regulatory Compliance
Many templates are designed to align with legal, regulatory, or industry requirements, ensuring that the plan complies with relevant standards, reducing compliance risks.

10. Facilitates Training and Testing
A structured plan created from a template makes it easier to communicate and train members of the organisation – particularly if the template contains checklists and breaks the process down into clear steps. In this context a business continuity plan template, if it contains sufficient guidance, helps to build business continuity expertise and familiarity by supporting “learning by example”.

11. Facilitates Scalability
A well-designed business continuity plan template will be adaptable and scalable as the organisation grows or changes. A business continuity template that is deigned to provide the most appropriate tools for the job will facilitate this scalability. For instance, a risk assessment based on a spreadsheet can easily accommodate additional content for new parts of the organisation or new products or services. A template that supports the development of individual BCPs provides the capability to easily add a plan for the new parts of the organisation without undertaking a huge document update and mail-out