Prepare for
the unexpected
The recent events in Holborn, London,
where an underground fire caused
power cuts and days of disruption
costing an estimated £50 million,
raise an important question for
business managers:What plans do you
have in place for the unexpected?
The Holborn fire was unusual, but
disruption is also caused by everyday
events, such as extreme weather or
transport problems, and businesses
need to know they can cope with such
emergencies.
There are many aspects to consider
but one of the most important is
telecoms. According to the Chartered
Management Institute (CMI), almost
one in four companies experiences an
interruption to their telecoms every year.
Whilst most of these are short-term,
lengthy disruptions can lead to business
failure. A study by Henley Management
College found that 60% of companies
that experienced a loss of normal
telecoms for 10 days ceased trading
within a year.
Following the disruption caused by last month’s
underground fire in Holborn, Dave Millet asks
‘How prepared is your business for an emergency?’
Business Continuity
magazine
28
Do you know
how to set the
call forward?
Can it be done
remotely?
Last year, the number of power outages in
the UK rose for the fourth successive year,
according to the
Blackout Tracker UK Annual
Report 2014
from power management
company Eaton.
In 2014, there were 537 reported power
outages, up from 505 in 2013, 246 in 2012 and
241 in 2011. Outages lasted an average of 67
minutes each and collectively affected 1,059,472
people.
The most common causes were faulty
equipment and human error, but animals knocking
over electricity power lines, vehicle accidents,
weather, theft and vandalism were also factors.
The report highlights emerging threats to the
electricity supply, such as growing use of drones,
and the UK’s precarious electricity generating
capacity caused by the closure of ageing power
stations and growing demand for power.
Ofgem, the UK’s energy regulator, has
estimated that in the winter of 2015-16 capacity
margin could fall as low as 2%.
Steve Spicer of Eaton says the Blackout
Tracker is a wake-up call for businesses that are
ever more reliant on the Internet and IT network
infrastructures.
He said: “I
hope that this
information will
act as an incentive
for organisations
to take preventive
measures and ensure
they have a reliable
power infrastructure
solution that can
protect against costly
and potentially
devastating power failures. It is only by doing so
that business continuity can be maintained and
any disruption minimised.”
Here are some of the questions you
should be asking to ensure your business
survives such a disruption:
n
If you have VOIP, you can log in via
a web portal and divert calls, but do you
know how to do this?
n
Some VOIP solutions have automatic
fail-over, but is it set up on yours?
n
Is your data backed up off-site? Do
you know how to access it from other
devices?
n
For those who have analogue lines,
did you know you can add call divert as a
feature for a few pounds a month?
n
If you have ISDN services you can
normally only redirect all your numbers
to one single number. SIP allows you to
redirect individual extensions, each to a
different number if necessary.
n
Do you have the details of who to
call if there is an outage? And are your
account details held off-site or in the
cloud where you can access them?
n
If you have a phone system, do you
know how to set the call forward? Can it
be done remotely?
n
Have you considered inbound
numbers that come with an App to
activate your continuity plan at the touch
of a button? Inbound numbers are virtual
numbers that sit in front of your phone
system. They exist in the Cloud and you
control them via aWeb Portal, so you can
instantly redirect them yourself. They are
more commonly associated with 0845,
0800 etc. but you can have geographic
01,02,03 numbers as well.
At Equinox, customers often ask us
how much business continuity they
actually need. A good starting point is to
consider the cost of a day’s lost business.
For a hedge fund, this is likely to be quite
large, justifying significant investment in
resilience and alternatives. For a firm of
accountants, the impact is likely to be
less severe.
Another way of looking at it is to
assess how much of your day-to-day
business is conducted over the phone.
The higher the percentage, the more
prepared you should be.
Being prepared means taking action
now – not waiting until something
happens. Hopefully you will never need
to rely on a business continuity plan. But
if you do, the actions you take now could
be the difference between survival and
bankruptcy.
Dave Millett runs Equinox, a leading
independent telecoms brokerage and
consultancy firm. He has helped many
different types of organisation achieve
savings of up to 80% on their telecoms.
Dave Millett,
Equinox
Power cut risk
grows, warns
Eaton
