When a crisis arises, there is usually no forewarning or prediction—it just hits. Covid-19 has shaken various organizations to their core, as they scramble to adapt to a work from home structure. Many organizations have not been able to work, and their clients have had to pay the price. Although a crisis cannot always be avoided or prevented, how do some organizations quickly adapt to changes, while others are left behind?
Learn from your success
The amount of effort an organization takes during their business continuity planning (BCP) stage and the way it is stress tested through various crises, can be a good indicator as to how well-prepared they will be in the future. We have been practicing and following BCP since the early days of our operations and focused on creating well-defined BCP for our clients and organization at large. Doing so has allowed us to sustain our business through various moments of crisis.
Our BCP has been stress-tested many times throughout the years. We have faced various events ranging from earthquakes in Chile to riots/protests/strikes in India, and many kinds of events in between. Every event had a lesson we could learn from, which directly affected how we deal with people, processes and technology during a disaster. Our systems and processes have become stronger through each event, which has given us the ability to deal with the unexpected.
Establish a strong IT team
In the past, leaders of organizations did not see the importance of being tech-literate. However, with more and more business processes being enabled through technology, leaders need to start investing time and effort into developing their IT team. A strong IT team is needed to step-up, implement and support an organization’s rapidly changing IT needs. The strength of an IT team not only relies on the number of members it has, but also on their ability to make themselves future-proof.
The majority of the members of our IT team have made a conscious effort to up-skill themselves and continue developing their skills. With technology evolving at such a rapid pace, we would be behind the curve if our team did not make this a priority. This has given our team the ability to execute and experiment with different solutions. Many members of our IT team have had 10+ years of growth with our organization. They have been able to grow with us, and adapt to the needs of the organization.
Have a plan ready to execute
Ensuring that a strong business continuity plan (BCP) is set in-place, can be the difference between an organization being proactive or reactive. In most cases, a reactive approach to problem solving leaves little opportunity to fully prepare. A proactive approach enables organizations to put in place a robust BCP that ensures various aspects of the situation are taken into consideration.
During this situation, countless organizations have not been able to work, as they had to take extra time to compensate for their lack of preparation. Our own business model and client governance model helped us mobilize during this time of crisis. We have been practicing preparedness through our security control and business continuity measures, which has helped us work through various situations. Finding a solution that is readily available and is able to be scaled up or down, is something that organizations should prioritize when thinking of a plan. We took the time to move things to the cloud (Email, messaging, documents, applications), which helped make the transition into working from home smoother and quicker.
Constantly update and upgrade
One of the worst things an organization can do is become complacent, especially in the realm of technology. There is so much new technology out there for organizations to leverage, but they simply do not use it. These companies rely on their experience within their industry to get them through, but even with years of experience, things can never be certain. This is why organizations need better planning, testing and execution of their BCP while also investing in technology.
One of the key focus areas that we invested in when keeping our business afloat in uncertain and difficult times was technology. With technology rapidly intertwining itself with business, we have always looked for business value in technology. Most of our recent investments in technology has focused on:
- Collaboration and productivity tools which has made our global workforce more efficient and connected.
- Virtual desktops/laptops which has allowed our teams to work from any location in any of our offices.
- Secure connectivity enabling our business users remote access to applications and other resources.
- The cloud has helped us build agility, flexibility, scalability and easy of manageability in addition to high availability. This has also reduced our dependency on on-premise data centers, and has also reduced the risk of technology failure.
Evalueserve would like to thank Microsoft, CISCO, VMWare, and Palo Alto Networks for their prompt support in helping us run our global operations during this unprecedented event.