Telecoms: the lifeblood of your company

How long could your business survive without its telephone system? Asks Graham Chick.

Why do so many people invariably ignore possibly the most obvious, but probably the most important, element of a business’s infrastructure when preparing their business continuity plans - and forget their (total?) reliance on their telecommunication systems, the lifeblood of any company?

Have you, yes you, Mr. Risk Manager, Mr. Business Continuity Manager, or more importantly you Mr. Finance Director or you Mr. Chief Executive, responsible for the ongoing success of your company and answerable to your shareholders, ever stopped to think how long your business could survive without your telephone system? How much income/profit would disappear from lost business if you could not talk to your customers, your suppliers, your staff or, more importantly, they could not talk or contact your organisation, for say, 1 hour? 1day? 1week?

Given the fact that more than 70 percent of business transactions take place over the telephone these days, do you not think it would be worth giving this element of your business more consideration?

KPMG have stated in open forum that according to Robert S. Kaplan, talking on ‘balanced scorecard’, 85 percent of a company’s value is in its intangible assets, notably its brands and reputation. Furthermore in a June 2000 survey, management consultant McKinsey found that over 80 percent of investors would pay 18 percent more for the shares in a well governed company which, by inference, means one that has taken due account of all of the major risks that might affect the every day operations of a company, and thus its ability to continue trading profitably, and planned for their respective failure – and what more important than maintaining contact with the outside world via their telephone system?

In an era when the transfer of information around the world takes only seconds, waiting hours or even days to re-establish your communication links in times of failure will inevitably place the reputation of any company under serious threat. Retaining and/or maintaining your communications system is therefore key to effective business continuity management. Maintaining communications with your staff, customers, suppliers (and the media) in the immediate aftermath of a disaster must be given high priority.

In a business continuity study benchmark report conducted by KPMG, compiled from 778 responses received from a four-page questionnaire sent out to 10,000 readers of Contingency Planning & Management Magazine in October 2000, a staggering 54 percent of companies stated that they had been affected by a communications failure. What is interesting however, was the fact that 72 percent of respondents could not tolerate more than 24hrs downtime with 24 percent of respondents stating that they could not tolerate more than 2 hrs downtime. What is perhaps even more concerning however was that only 31 percent of companies that suffered an interruption completely met their recovery objectives (whatever they were!) and, more important still, a similar number, 31 percent of companies were only just developing contingency plans or had no plans in place.

Whilst these statistics are now ageing and we have all witnessed the tragic events of September 11th, there is considerable evidence and subsequent research which points to the fact that little has changed!

So why do so many people fail to give due consideration to the recovery of their company’s telecommunication systems?

As is always the case with such wide ranging questions there are invariably many possible answers but in this instance one reason stands out above many. Because when you picked up a telephone handset you rarely failed to get a dial tone! – Until recently that is.

One main reason for this is the fact that within our towns and cities, with ever increasing demands for more services, the roads and pavements are being dug up with amazing regularity to insert new or better services – with the net result being, in so many instances that the poor innocent digger driver cuts through the service cables that are already there. Instantaneously depriving the surrounding businesses of their electricity, water, gas, or telecommunications.

However there are a growing number of instances when companies find themselves in a position where the phones are working fine – but that their staff cannot reach them to use them. How many times over recent months have businesses been disrupted because of London Underground strikes, rail strikes, localised flooding or bomb alerts?

So what is the answer? How do you protect your business from a telecommunications failure and enable 100 percent of your staff to keep working effectively, within minutes of a disaster occurring – no matter what the occurrence?

Simply the adoption of more flexible telecommunications platform, which has the ability to take all of your incoming calls and distribute them to any number of different locations as circumstances dictate. In its simplest form this could mean seamlessly re-routing all incoming calls (individual DDIs) to respective homes, and/or mobiles when it was simply inappropriate for your staff, who could work, to go to a place of work – as a result of industrial action of any kind or simply bad weather – snow, ice, storms etc.

So, if you need to protect your business, your brand and your profits by planning for a failure of your telecommunications system then do not despair. There are solutions available that can deliver a truly instantaneous and cost effective solution that can be tailored to meet your needs.

Graham Chick is managing director of the GemaTech Group, specialists in the delivery of “always on” telecommunications systems for the flexible working and business continuity markets.

www.gematech.com