Do you have a Strategy for Pandemic Planning? ... and if you don’t have one does it really matter?

With a sharp increase in the number of cases of Swine flu in both Scotland and England over the past few weeks, it may well become a business critical issue for all of our businesses!

In Scotland alone numbers have more than doubled in the last week, with 13,800 reported cases, while in England the numbers rose to 14,000 an increase of 5,000 in one week! At a recent briefing, Sir Liam Donaldson, chief medical officer for England, said “we might be seeing the start of an upturn.  There are straws in the wind, from the increase in consultations with GP and a small increase in hospitalisations.  It suggests swine flu is coming back”.

It is imperative that companies and businesses have plans and processes in place to ensure that their business will continue to function, even if staff and possibly whole departments are badly affected by absences due to the swine flu pandemic.

Let’s take this a little closer to home ...

Think for a moment if this was your finance department, where key personnel control BACS payments for suppliers and possibly for Payroll processing.  In many cases, people work around the payment days, so that senior staff authorise and process certain elements of the system. However, during a Pandemic it may be that not only are the core staff unavailable, but whole departments are immobilised, either through illness or for one reason or another are not able to get to their normal place of work.

The planning for Pandemic Business Continuity takes this into account, and ensures that a number of key staff are trained to an appropriate level, have proper and correct levels of authorisation, have practised the key tasks that they cover, and have remote working contingency factored into their system access requirements.

Have you identified Key Staff and Departments who need to have cover for illness or staff shortages?

Are your systems capable of large scale remote working and do you have licenses to enable home working to take place?

Have you considered the effect it could have on your business if suppliers and customers have restrictions placed on their travel and meeting arrangements?

We can help you to prepare for a Pandemic and assist you to put Processes and Procedures in place to ensure that you have a plan for Business Continuity. Our planning tool will enable you to:

     >    Analyse your gaps in Business Continuity

     >    Identify Key Personnel / Groups

     >    Check out your Processes during staff shortages / illness

     >    Provide a Independent view & Risk analysis / BC readiness template

     >    Produce Key Actions & Plan to help you establish a robust BC Strategy.

     >    Tailor our analysis to your key business process

Don't wait until an issue happens, call us now on 01505 842694 or email us about your own Business Continuity requirements and explore how we can help you put the necessary procedures in place.

During these times where businesses are being stretched to new limits, it is time to look again at businesses strategies, and in particular the link to the IT Strategy. Many IT departments have far too many projects, very often stretching over a number of years, with little hope of ever achieving the timescales or targets for the organisation. In fact one organisation has developed a strategy to combat this, it simply states "Fewer! Bigger! Faster!"

Some of the current projects may no longer be viable, given the economic climate. IT Operational and Support departments need to be re-defined in ensure they are managing the current setup in a more efficient way, with the right combination of resources and processes. New ways of working may need to be introduced to increase the levels of service and control costs. Existing contracts with external suppliers may have to be renegotiated and the partner ship agreements and SLA’s need to be re-visited to ensure they are effective for the environment, which in some cases may have reduced in requirements.