GemaTech Opinion When the phone doesn’t ring....don’t bother calling your telco! With over one in four businesses experiencing expensive business downtime due to weather related incidents last year, a growing number of UK organisations are finally beginning to recognise the need to provide resilient solutions for their telecoms – as well as their IT infrastructure. However, with limited or zero business continuity budget, few claim to be able to afford the necessary investment irrespective of escalating business risk – forgetting that most, if not all companies are totally reliant upon the receipt of their incoming calls! Yet an increasing number of public and private sector organisations are now, quite correctly, allocating budget to support both flexible working and ‘green’ policies. So why not leverage this budget to deliver secure, flexible and cost effective telecoms solutions that enable staff to work from home or any number of alternative remote locations on demand. This would enable organisations to meet these corporate objectives and also attain a comprehensive business continuity solution by default, explains Graham Chick, chief executive, The GemaTech Group Business Risk The risk of business outage due to weather related incidents has soared in recent years. According to a recent survey by the Chartered Management Institute, 9% of businesses experienced a weather-related business interruption in 2005, while that number reached 28% in 2006. Of course, the weather is not the only hazard affecting business continuity. Other factors such as road works, adjacent building fire, gas explosion or terrorist attack are all significantly diminishing employees’ ability to answer the telephone in the conventional office building. 60% of respondents to the CMI survey fear a time when there will be nobody available to actually answer the phone in their offices, whilst 13% reported a loss of site access during 2006. Traditional Route When customers and suppliers cannot make contact, it is only a matter of time until they move their business to the competition. The loss of reputation and consequential brand damage makes the impact of a telecoms outage equally, if not more significant than a loss of IT infrastructure. Despite telecoms outage having major repercussions, most companies are failing to invest in a cost-effective, proactive business continuity strategy that encompasses both IT and telecoms equipment, which begs the question - Why? The simple answer is because those within a business in charge of implementing such a solution will opt for the easy route and call their local Telco to enquire after what is available. Unfortunately, a Telco’s main aim is to simply increase their own profit centre and internal sales whilst fundamentally failing to recognise the growing public and private sector demand for cost effective, telecoms solutions that also facilitate more flexible ways of working on a daily basis.
Corporate Failure Even though a flexible solution that supports employees working in diverse locations whilst retaining central management control is fast becoming crucial to any business, organisations turning to the mainstream Telcos for such a solution will leave empty handed. Although these solutions will enable organisations to leverage existing budget to meet both key policies and deliver solid business continuity, most Telcos aren’t flexible enough to meet the needs of businesses facing up to multiple continuity threats. While BT is at long last one of the few companies promoting a flexible solution to business disruption, an organisation with just over 2,500 employees located in 6 offices across the UK and Ireland would be looking at spending £39,000 per month. This cost is obviously completely unrealistic to most companies. Thankfully, solutions are available to recover up to 15 concurrent inbound calls from £800 per month or £1,200 per month when incorporating a network-based secure voice recording solution, which can be used at any time. Broad Appeal Specialist telecoms vendors are now able to instantaneously and seamlessly recover 100% of incoming calls to office based individual geographical DDIs by intelligently rerouting them, on an individual DDI basis, to any other number, or series of numbers, in a simple to use, cost effective manner. And, with the option of being able to voice record all in bound and outbound calls, including those re-routed to any remote location, and any subsequent outbound calls made by those remote workers, the technology also addresses the burgeoning compliance requirement. An increasing number of organisations are now considering the use of flexible working budgets to invest in telecoms solutions that both support key business practices, from flexible working to reducing the carbon footprint, and provide the business continuity required in an increasingly risk conscious environment. So isn’t it time the major Telcos moved away from inflexible and expensive business continuity solutions to deliver technology that supports the day to day operational requirements of UK business? ENDS