| Business Continuity and Today’s Technology |
| Written by Joseph Roux | |
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The technology is out there to allow you to have a Business Continuity Plan that makes doing business in an emergency a seamless, short loss time transition. But having a Cadillac program may not be a solution for you. Instead of having dual call centers and off-site data services, maybe your business needs a fax machine and a land-line. You don’t need a cookie-cutter, technology rich program. You need a plan that makes sense for you, for your business. It may end up being technology rich, but it will be what you need. Business Impact AnalysisDo a Business Impact Analysis. This will help you figure out what systems are crucial to running your business. You will list the business processes and decide what effect an outage will have on your customers. Each process and time of outage will have a dollar figure attached to it, and you can develop an educated Business Continuity Plan that is specific to your business. The more money an outage will cost you, the more impact to your company and the more money you’ll spend on a plan.One of the advantages to a Business Impact Analysis would be that it helps you determine the sequence of events for restoration. Which parts of your business should be restored first and to what level? Cover the BasicsMake sure you cover the basics in any plan. You have to communicate. What if the cell towers go down? Do you have home telephone numbers for your employees? If your site is compromised, can you move your 800 service to voice mail or another location?Many companies have PBX type telephone systems and don’t realize that the telephones will be out if there is a power failure. Do you have battery backup? If not, many times the fax machine has a separate telephone line. See if it works. Have your vendor and/or long-distance providers explain your options. If your 800 service is mission-critical and you can’t tolerate any downtime, check into including telecommuting with a portion of your workforce. They may need a landline, or just a computer with internet and a headset. There are web based call center services that offer telecommuting options for disaster recovery and business continuity. Make sure if you choose one of these backup plans that you test it often. Again you can work with your long-distance and equipment vendors to see what they suggest for this problem. Executive Escalation ListIf the owner or CEO is gone, or out of communication, who is running things? If two people can’t be reached, who’s the third on the list? Make sure that the plan is completely understood by your employees and don’t forget to designate an escalation list that includes backup for the critical management positions.PracticeMake sure you run practice scenarios. If the first one isn’t great, make critical changes to the plan and do another practice. Run practice BCP plans until you get it right and then run them once a year to keep them dialed in. Try and keep the practices realistic enough that you can engage your employee’s emotions and see how they react under stress.Missing In ActionHave you included a plan if you have half your workforce out sick? This completely human impact on your business may be handled by extending call on hold thresholds or by sending a portion of the calls to a voice mail box that can explain the situation and take messages. Great ideas, do you know how to make these changed in your phone system programming? What if the person who does know, is one of the people out sick?SummaryA Business Continuity Plan can make the difference between staying in business after an emergency episode, or losing enough customers and money that you end up out of business.These plans can also be important if you want a business loan. Many lenders want to know if you’ve done, and actually see the document, for continuity planning and disaster planning. The difference between disaster planning and continuity planning can be described simply as a disaster is something that happens to everyone, versus an emergency that requires continuity planning is something that happens just to your business or the few businesses in your area. |
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