Do the majority of people understand that telecoms resilience is about keeping a company’s communication channels always open, rather than simply trying to recover them when it all goes wrong?
Many terms, but only one meaning?
I read an article in the London Chambers magazine today by Lyndon Bird, Technical Director of the BCI, who was unravelling the meanings of business continuity, resilience, emergency planning and crisis management, and it struck me that there certainly is a variety of understanding of these different aspects of our particular discipline. His argument is that while some see Business Continuity Management as ‘an operational response to large scale incidents, usually involving significant asset loss. In actual fact BCM is about finding strategic solutions to the loss of one or more of seven key resources (customers, suppliers, staff, facilities, technology, cash-flow and goodwill).’
A different perspective
I personally would have worded this last sentence rather differently. I don’t believe that BCM is about finding strategic solutions to the loss of resources, I would say it is about implementing strategic solutions, testing them, communicating to employees about them and making them part of everyday working practices. The idea that telecoms resilience is about having a plan that can be activated in an emergency is, in my opinion, a fragile one. Telecoms resilience should be used hand in hand with flexible working practices as part of normal, everyday working culture. If you, as an employee, don’t know how you will answer your incoming calls should your office be out of bounds then by definition your telecoms resilience plan has already failed.
Everyday not just for disruptions
Business continuity, and in particular the technology aspect of its planning, is not for a few people to decide what will happen during a disruption, but should filter into every employee’s everyday psyche. Most people know what to do when their office fire alarm goes off, but how many know how to access the information they need to carry on working? Of those who know that they will be shipped off to a recovery site, how many know how or even if their phone calls will be re-routed to their new temporary desk?
