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In the earlier article on this topic we made several basic assumptions around our Business Continuity planning and needs.  They included that we would focus on the need to re-establish some key IT and communications functionality to keep our business operating for a few days while ‘normal services were resumed’.  We also needed to do this on a limited budget and decided that we would do some planning to identify our key pain points should a fault like this occur.

General consensus is that our list of priority systems would include :-

1.    Email & Phone - To communicate with our customers and  staff
2.     Fax – to receive customer orders and  place our orders with suppliers
3.    Accounting system – To place orders in our system and record transactions for stock dispatch
4.    Internet Connectivity – To access supplier websites for product research, placing supplier orders, access bank account and make payments

We also need to anticipate what type of business limiting faults we are trying to work around.  My list of the most common two are :-

1.    Loss of Internet, telephone and fax lines for half a day or longer
2.    Failure of our computer server for a day or longer

We will take a look at both of these scenarios and come up with some work –arounds and some preventative measures, but first of all we need to do a little more planning.   Bearing in mind that we may not have a telephone system, nor a computer system when we want to swing our plan into action, so we must document our plan on paper (not electronically).  We must also store this plan somewhere where we have easy access and keep a copy in the desk draw at home as a safeguard.

This plan will contain, as a minimum, the following information :-

1)    Contact names and numbers and our account number of :-
a)    Our phone provider/s
b)    Our PABX provider
c)    Our Internet provider
d)    Our IT support providers (may be multiple)
2)    Contact names and numbers of our top 20% of Customers and our main Suppliers
3)    Contact details for our insurance agents and our policy numbers
4)    Home phone numbers and mobile numbers of our staff

Plan 1 – loss of communications

Phone or PABX
Assuming that we have discovered the fault is not going to be rectified within half a day, we will undertake the following steps :-
1.    Contact our phone provider and divert our lines to a mobile phone
2.    Use the nominated mobile phone to take down the bare minimum of contact information and have other staff call back on their mobiles and deal with the calls thus keeping the principal inbound line as free as possible
3.    Monitor the progress of the repairs as often Telecommunication providers are dealing with multiple outages and DO NOT make contact to report that the service has been recovered.
This is the skeletal work-around plan.  You will need to tailor it to suit your business.  For example if you have a Reception and an Orders line, repeat the above with two pivotal mobiles taking contact details and passing them on to others to deal with.  If you have another Branch, you may consider diverting phones to that location.  Also remember that this work-around depends on staff co-operation so involve them in the planning and make arrangements to compensate them for their call costs.

Internet
Again, assuming that we have discovered the fault is not going to be rectified within half a day, we will undertake the following steps :-
1.    Contact our Internet provider and have them hold our Email and allow us to read it without downloading it
2.    Use either a wireless internet connection from a mobile phone or laptop, or an internet account at someone’s home to read and print inbound emails.  Distribute the printed emails to appropriate persons for processing
3.    Once the phone lines are back and running, restart the Internet modem, ask you ISP to allow email flow as normal and resume normal processing.  Do be aware that email duplicates may be delivered to your inbox so don’t double up on orders etc !

Fax
If you are quite dependent on fax for inbound orders, take the following steps :-
1.    Purchase a cheap fax unit from a local Office Supply shop if you do not stock them yourself
2.    Nominate a phone number at a home or another office to be used until the fax line is reinstated
3.    Call our phone provider and divert the fax number to the nominated line
4.    Cancel the diversion once the original fax line is working

General
It is important that we keep our key customers informed of our situation, and there are a few other important tasks to do at this time :-
1.    Contact our top 20% of Customers and advise them of our situation.  If our communications emergency plans are working they can be reassured that we will be able to fulfil their orders, but there may be a slight delay due to work-arounds being in place
2.    Call our Insurance agent and advise them of the situation.  They may ask for certain records to be kept to assist our claim
3.    Assess staff work load impact and look for opportunities to divert them to other roles or possibly for them to work from home.  Remember that if we divert phone or fax to staff homes, they will possibly need to have additional staff visit them to assist with work loads and fax / call distribution

Summary
This plan is an outline only and there are details which need to be discussed with you IT and communications suppliers to ensure that things run smoothly when they are needed.

Our next article will address a plan if our IT systems fail.  That can be messy, but having a plan will generally save the day !