Continuity of Operations Planning
As businesses move boldly forward with technology, often they lose track of what they would do in a disaster scenario, or what even constitutes a disaster scenario.
In the past, with a mostly paper-based workforce, workers were less reliant on computing resources and could be moved around more easily. Proximity to others was necessary because otherwise, there could be no collaboration. Dictation was the highest form of technology in place.
Today, most workers spend a majority of their time using computers or the associated services. And most workers expect that they’ll have access to email 24/7, even while on travel. Many expect to be able to edit documents while on the road. Most assume they can check voicemail, and get vital contact information for people they need to deal with, regardless of the time or location. Everyone expects to be able to get to the Internet from everywhere.As long as servers and services are working smoothly, everything works. But a hardware or software failure now can greatly impact a company’s ability to conduct business in a timely fashion. No information technology (IT) manager wants to be in a position to say “we’ll be back up and running when that part arrives two days from now”. Because of this, every single business should put together a continuity of operations procedure. (Or put more simply: a disaster plan.)
The plan should outline the different potential service and site-level outages, along with the standard times required to get back up and running. Special care needs to be taken where there are single-points of failure (SPOF), because one tiny flaw can cause a large cascade of errors. Common SPOFs include access to the internet, power and environmental factors, as well as reliance upon a third party’s network for key functions.
Once all the different potential failure points are documented, as well as the time required to bring them back online, a true disaster plan can be constructed.
What we’ve found is that many firms lack a good sense for the likeliness for various outages, as well as the time left to recover from them. If a power outage of greater than one day happens at least once a year during winter, it’s quite easy to calculate how much lost revenue can occur from such an event. It’s then easy to figure out how much money certain services (redundant email, files, etc) could save an organization.
Beyond the cost-benefit level, most organizations that currently lack a disaster plan could benefit from one simply because the reaction time will be quicker. A well-practiced disaster drill can mean the difference between 50 workers moving quickly to offsite locations to continue to provide service and an organization in chaos, with stranded customers affected. Having emergency contact numbers, as well as a phone tree for calling them, can quickly help organizations identify affected employees.
With help from information technology consultants such as New Signature, every firm can help dramatically reduce the stress associated with a disaster. If you haven’t discussed continuity of operations yet, there’s never a better time than now.