Bert van der Zwan, vice-president of EMEA for
WebEx, explains why SMEs need to give more thought to their
business continuity plans and how existing technology can be
leveraged to make such plans cost-effective and help maintain their
competitive edge in any situation.
Whether it is a natural disaster or an epidemic, businesses can
temporarily and often suddenly, lose effective communication with
customers, making it important to have plans in place that ensure
business continuity. Take, for instance, the outbreak of the
Norovirus in the early weeks of this year - at its height one in
eight people were off sick, costing the economy an estimated £40m a
day. The recent problems at
Heathrow's Terminal 5 are another example of an unexpected
disruption, with some 430 flights cancelled in the first week
alone. Such unavoidable occurrences can be catastrophic for SMES,
with 80% of businesses affected by a major incident either never
re-opening or closing within 18 months. Despite this, business
continuity is an area often overlooked by SMEs, with Gartner
estimating that only 35% have a comprehensive disaster plan in
place.
SMEs need to recognise the importance of business continuity
because the way business is conducted has dramatically changed over
the last 20 years. The relatively leisurely pace at which
interactions occurred when the most immediate mode of contact was
the telephone is fast disappearing. E-mail, instant messaging and
the ubiquity and portability of the internet means that our
approach to, and means of, working has changed. We are also more
mobile, and as business travel increases so does the risk of being
held up by, for example, traffic or flight cancellations.
Alongside this, customer expectations have also changed. They
now expect access to organisations as and when they need it,
regardless of how mobile businesses are and, perhaps more
importantly, whether it is an SME or large enterprise. This is in
part because SMEs in the UK are more inclined to follow the same
pragmatic approach to IT that larger enterprises adopted some time
ago, and are competing on a more level playing field. However, this
pervasiveness, and subsequent reliance on technology to punch above
their weight and compete against larger organisations, puts them in
a vulnerable position should this technology become
unavailable.
Minor interruptions, where most business facilities are
unaffected but employees still cannot get to work on time, occur
for a number of reasons. For example, floods can prevent access to
the office or a transport strike might occur. In such cases, there
is considerable risk that it will bring your business to a near or
complete standstill, and invariably cause a substantial loss in
profit. A quarter of businesses can expect to lose a minimum of
£10,000 an hour if business is disrupted and for those in the
finance sector this figure can reach millions of pounds. Sympathy
and loyalty does not last long with customers and in such a
competitive market they will be quick to turn to one of your
competitors if you cannot satisfy their needs.
Despite these risks, if you mention
business continuity to an SME it often conjures up images of a
very complex and expensive plan with no guarantee that it will ever
be put to use. However, this need not be the case. Many parts of a
business' infrastructure can be leveraged if disaster strikes, with
the added benefit of being useful to a business when everything is
running smoothly.
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications are one such example
of these technologies as it means maintenance can be taken care of
remotely by the supplier or reseller. Also, it gives employees
greater accessibility if they need to work outside the office. This
is because the software requires only an internet connection so it
can be used anywhere - from home, at work, or in any Wi-Fi hotspot
- and is increasingly becoming available on wireless devices such
as mobile phones and Blackberrys. As such, users can access the
business applications they need whenever they need them, so if
employees cannot get to the office they can be productive
elsewhere.
Collaborative SaaS applications such as web conferencing develop
this notion by allowing users to meet and work with remote
colleagues online. This type of technology can play a critical role
in keeping forcibly dispersed workforces operating effectively for
extended periods. To ensure it is used to its full potential it is
important SMEs deploy any such system well before a disaster takes
place to ensure employees, and indeed suppliers and customers, are
familiar with the technology. It is important, however, to choose a
conferencing system that provides sufficiently broad functionality
to support the needs of the business, from simple voice conferences
to web meetings that allow document sharing, virtual training and
large-scale seminars.
Voice-over-IP technology can also play a significant role in
enabling businesses to stay up and running in the face of
disruption however, you do need to ensure your system has a high
availability capability. This means a more engineered, implemented
and planned approach. VoIP differs from telephony phone services as
desktop VoIP phones are powered by your organisation, not the phone
company. So, if in your business continuity plan you have provided
for uninterruptible power supply support for your network, you need
to ensure that this support extends throughout all of the VoIP
components. Nonetheless, it can enable employees to
cost-effectively re-create their office on a laptop, including a
softphone interface that can incorporate presence, so other
co-workers' online status is detected, as well as contact
information for customers, suppliers and others needed to stay in
business.
Again, with all of these communications, it is important that
they are used on a day-to-day basis so employees are familiar with
them well before they are called upon if business is disrupted.
This then has the added advantage of addressing the cost issue for
SMEs as they become part of the business infrastructure. The
benefits of such technologies are then realised even if the
business continuity plan is never used as they can help support
more flexible working practices so employees can be productive
wherever they are.
SMEs ignore business continuity at their peril. They cannot
afford to overlook the vast costs of business interruptions and any
loss of communication with customers, however temporary, because it
can have catastrophic effects. In the last five years alone global
terrorism, major climatic events, and transport strikes have all
demonstrated their potential for disrupting business continuity. It
is very encouraging that SMEs are already savvy when it comes to
technology and are well placed to compete against much larger
organisations. This now needs to be extended to solutions and
applications that can be used on a day-to-day basis and support a
cost-effective business continuity plan to ensure they have the
best chance of maintaining that edge in any situation.