| August blackout results in new attitudes to business continuity
The study is a joint undertaking of Mirifex, a regional business technology consulting firm, The Center for Regional Economic Issues at Case Western Reserve University's Weatherhead School of Management (REI@Weatherhead), and CrainTech. Although still being conducted, preliminary findings of the study include responses of 129 executive-level managers of businesses and organisations in Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Southern Canada. Among the key findings to date are: * 11 percent of firms say that the blackout will affect their decision-making with regards to either growth or relocation. * As a consequence of the blackout, over one third of businesses surveyed (38 percent) said they'd be somewhat or very likely to invest in alternate energy systems. * Over one-third of firms surveyed (34 percent) have no risk management or disaster recovery plans in place. * Nearly half (46 percent) of the businesses surveyed will invest more in risk management, business continuity and/or disaster recovery in the future. * More than a third of the businesses surveyed (35 percent) felt it was somewhat or very likely that the region's image would suffer as a result of the blackout. * Two-thirds of the businesses surveyed (66 percent) lost at least a full business day due to the blackout. * A quarter of the businesses surveyed (24 percent) lost more than $50,000 per hour of downtime-meaning at least $400,000 for an 8-hour day. And 4 percent of businesses lost more than $1 million for each hour of downtime. * Nearly half of the businesses surveyed (46 percent) said that lost employee productivity was the largest contributor to losses suffered due to the blackout. * Production/manufacturing and customer sales/service were the areas of business hardest hit by the blackout.
•Date:
6th November 2003 •Region: N.America •Type:
Article •Topic: BC
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