Water, water everywhere
On the afternoon of Sunday 22nd July 2007, Fortis became aware that its Gloucester water treatment works was about to be flooded, threatening 300,000 local homes and businesses with loss of water supply. Fortis was well prepared to cope because of its business continuity plans developed with SunGard Availability Services
During July 2007, Gloucester and its surrounding areas were subject to some of the heaviest flooding on record. Not only did flash flooding cause blocked drains and extensive damage, but river levels also rose, causing further damage. What is more, as water treatment works were engulfed, drinking water supplies were endangered as well.
On the afternoon of Sunday 22nd July, Fortis received news reports that its local water treatment works were about to be flooded. This would mean that over 300,000 local homes and businesses, including Fortis' main office buildings in Gloucester, would lose their water supplies: The local water suppliers were also advising that it could take up to two weeks until water supplies were fully restored.
That very evening the Fortis management team discussed the situation. They placed SunGard Availability Services, their company's business continuity provider, on alert and arranged to review the situation early the next day.
By Monday morning the situation had worsened. Whilst Fortis' buildings were not under immediate threat of flooding, the lack of water meant that the offices would have to close immediately until supplies were restored. Fortis' board made a swift decision to invoke SunGard's services and re-locate key staff to its Bristol Recovery Centre.
Having worked with SunGard Availability Services to refine its business continuity plans for a number of years, Fortis was well prepared to cope with a range of unexpected events. Indeed, only 12 months previously, it had tested this specific scenario. Fortis had therefore already identified which staff to re-locate, where they would go, and how the business would function in the event of an invocation. In this instance, staff performing customer critical functions such as its customer call centre and claim handling were re-located, whilst other staff could work from home.
Mission critical
Fortis' Gloucester site is a crucial part of its UK operation with its call centres handling an average of 10,000 calls a day. The number one priority for Fortis was to ensure there was no dip in performance compared to its usual high standards of response times. To add to this pressure, call volumes were 10 per cent higher than usual, due to the large number of claims from policy holders already affected by the floods.
As well as co-ordinating transport to the SunGard site for Fortis' call centre staff, Fortis and SunGard also worked around the clock to ensure all its IT and telecoms systems were effectively backed up and fully working by the time the staff arrived. The majority of inbound calls were re-routed through this centre. In addition, Fortis' IT department worked closely alongside SunGard engineers to ensure that the re-routing and backup operation ran as smoothly as possible.
The results were impressive, with interruption to service during the invocation period of less than 24 hours. In spite of the move and the increased number of calls, service levels quickly recovered to near normal as soon as the operations commenced from the recovery site.
"Protecting our service operation was mission critical. As our business relies upon responding to our customers as quickly and efficiently as possible, we couldn't afford for our phone systems to be offline for any sustained period of time. We pride ourselves on our customer service and any significant disruption would have been unacceptable, particularly during such difficult times for many of our policyholders affected by the flooding." says Shaun Astley, Operations Director, Fortis.
Effective communication
Fortis handles claims through a network of over 3,000 brokers. During this period one of Fortis' key priorities was to communicate effectively with these brokers to assure them that despite the local floods it would be business as usual. Fortis sent an email to its entire broker base detailing what had happened and the actions it had taken to remedy it. They explained that they would be fully up and running within hours.
Fortis also released statements on its website so that the whole situation remained as transparent as possible to the outside world. Finally, staff were instructed to call an 0800 number everyday at 8am for the latest information on the situation.
"Communication during this period was vital to our recovery operation. We made a concerted effort to ensure our brokers, customers and most importantly of all our staff, were fully up to date with any changes in our situation," says Astley.
People, information and customers connected
During the invocation over 250 staff were re-located to work at SunGard's Bristol Recovery Centre, for eight days. In many cases, employees were returning to homes either directly affected by flooding, or suffering water shortages. Small touches like the centre providing shower facilities were a welcome relief for those without hot water at home.
"Throughout this difficult time our staff demonstrated a real fighting spirit. Though many had their own problems at home caused by the flooding, they maintained their high levels of professionalism throughout. SunGard's Recovery Centre facilities were first-class and played an important part in keeping morale high," says Astley.
The entire invocation underlined the importance of Fortis having an effective business continuity programme in place.
"In many ways these events actually strengthened our reputation with our broker base. That we were able to keep our business up and running at such a difficult time, showed them that we are people they can do business with no matter what. Having effective plans in place turned a potential disaster to our reputation to a major proof point for us a business," concludes Astley.
In fact one of the broker's with whom Fortis works emailed this comment:
"This should be used as a case study of how to keep a business up and running, you're still answering the phones quicker than most other businesses".
Lessons learned
While Fortis had tested its business continuity plans on numerous occasions prior to this event, and ultimately coped very successfully, it learned some valuable lessons from this experience. Like any company reacting to an unexpected event, it found that there were certain parts of its plan that could be improved upon and worked on for the future. In the case of Fortis, one of the main issues it will be seeking to address is the logistics of transporting over 250 staff to the Bristol Recovery Centre during heavy flooding.
"Due to the surrounding area suffering such heavy flooding it was impossible in many cases for our employees to travel by car to the SunGard recovery centre. The scale of the floods and the damage they caused the surrounding roads was not something we had anticipated. We were to some degree fortunate that local schools had broken up for the summer holiday the week before, meaning that there were ample coaches and buses available to transport staff en masse to the recovery centre.
"The overall success of our recovery was largely due to the regular testing of our business continuity plans. However this experience showed us that when it comes to the real thing there will always be something you hadn't thought of or couldn't plan for. Our business continuity plan is constantly evolving to cope with new threats or circumstances, and we've taken some valuable lessons from this whole experience to make it even more robust," adds Astley.
