Don't lose your voice in a crisis
Unplanned events can have a significant impact on firms working to maintain business as usual. This has become increasingly apparent in the last year due to severe weather conditions, cyber attacks and the ongoing publicity around swine flu
In addition, everyday incidents such as power cuts and gas leaks are also having a contributing factor by preventing businesses accessing their building for several hours.
The majority of organisations will have disaster recovery and contingency planning in place to address these various scenarios. A significant amount of time and resources will have been spent planning how to operate in these conditions and in the majority of cases, the primary focus will be surrounding the data network and data centre.
Time and resources will often be spent building disaster recovery data centres and in some instances businesses may have even secured limited seats within business continuity centres. These same companies may have often overlooked their voice services or accepted the limitations imposed on them by their supplier; in effect compromising a lifeline to their business.
Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery arguably add up to be one in the same, but without fully incorporating voice it does not ensure Business Recovery. The incoming call is possibly the most important daily interface an organisation can have with their customer. Without it, they become vulnerable.
What to look for in a voice continuity solution?
When considering a voice continuity solution (independent of your PBX), it needs to be flexible enough to take into account all of your needs to reduce the chance of loss or reputation in the event of an emergency.
For many companies it is now imperative that the solution ensures that voice communication be maintained across all stakeholders including, employees, partners, suppliers and customers at all times.
Questions to consider for your solution include:
Does it cater for colleagues who work from home or are travelling?
In the event of an emergency, does the solution create customised text messages or alerts to be sent to its user base to let them know that a business recovery plan has been invoked (or revoked) as well as a step by step guide as to what they should do next
Does it give you a call recording option for any calls that need to be recorded for FSA/compliance purposes?
Is your voice backup permanently available and regularly tested, but only activated in an emergency to keep costs down?
Can your voice continuity plan be invoked or revoked in real-time by your organisation or vendor using a web portal, or on the move using a handheld PDA.
Can it be used by an individual to set up and control the delivery of their DDI on a day-to-day basis if required?
Does your inbound service encompass "dual parenting," giving you total control over voice services in the event of a disaster?
Ultimately your voice solution needs to ensure that you are able to return quickly to "business as usual" in a crisis with minimal resources to enable this.
Caroline Surujpaul, Marketing Director, www.proteluk.net
Glossary:
PBX: A private brand network that serves a particular business or office
DDI: Direct dialling inward
Dual Parenting: Dual parenting enables Direct Dial In (DDI) to continue operating if your local exchange processor fails. It can be delivered using either diverse routing or the normal ISDN30 route to the local exchange and then re-routing half on to a second local exchange.
