A Business Process Outsourcing company that doesn’t take any chances is the one you want to rely on. We live in a world of constant change that keeps pushing us to react and find new ways to adapt. Unexpected events like natural disasters, financial crises or political disruption can happen anywhere and anytime, and if you work closely with the BPO industry on a 24/7 basis you know you have to get back to business as soon as possible. You can’t control these sudden changes, but you can ensure that the impact will be minimal by knowing that the company you hire has backup sites to continue operations. The time taken for recovery is going to determine the success of the company’s backup and recovery strategy.
Having well elaborated continuity and disaster recovery plans will avoid disruptions in your operations in any type of emergency, this is the essence of Business Continuity Planning (BCP). The magnitude of the disasters cannot be estimated with 100% accuracy and maybe not all the operations can be immediately restored, but it is of great importance to recover the critical ones at the minimum, the world is an uncertain place and things can turn out to be very different from what you expect.
The hard work and expertise of your people is how you serve your customers. They are the ones who maintain your brand’s promise, of course more critical in any Service industry. Be aware that when a potential risk arrives you need to have a disaster and recovery plan in place to protect those people, colleagues and partners, which are your company’s most valuable and important asset. This enables your business to continue its operations amid any given situation. This plan protects your business assets, human resources, business processes and business partners, your BCP outlines must have detailed information on the procedures the company will follow if something occurs.
Business Process Outsourcing will play a very important role in your BCP, especially with partners who offer an everyday support service. This way, they can take on more responsibility in a disaster situation and be ready to take on critical functions. So basically, if you are putting all your work and investment into your company, make sure to keep looking ahead; the more detailed and structured the plan is, the faster you and your partners will be able to respond when disasters arrive.
5 steps to make Business Continuity Planning effective:
- Evaluate your business processes in order to be able to determine which are the most vulnerable. Now imagine if they were unavailable for hours, days or months. Thinking about it provides your business with its first impact analysis.
- Maintain business-critical functions by identifying the skill set and the number of workers that would be required to keep them running.
- Be very clear in setting out dependencies between each function.
- Lower the service level path and rotate security controls for each individual critical function, establish acceptable downtime.
- Determine and point out how each critical function will be maintained.
It is better to have a plan that maybe you’ll never need, than to need one and not have it at the moment something goes wrong. A lack of planning could be its own disaster for your company and your customers. Many people don’t think about business continuity until an incident occurs, and then it’s too late.
The technology research firm Gartner once pointed out that only 35 percent of BPO facilities have a well thought and comprehensive business continuity program. The research also found that less than 10 percent of the companies have worked out a formal business recovery and continuity process, putting a fair amount of businesses at stake.
The amount of work that goes in reacting to a natural disaster is huge, from cleaning up physical locations and getting any disrupted system back online, to filling up insurance claims and above all maintaining communication with your clients. No matter what the situation is, your customers will still need to get in touch with your business, which is why you need to ensure that your BPO partners have an updated disaster recovery strategy.
A common solution to attend this necessity is relying on call center services which can maintain communications with your customers, retaining clients by being able to provide answers to their needs during a crisis, so you can focus on all the other recovery efforts.
In all call centers there is an enormous amount of data and information being transmitted at all times, that is why any kind of shutdown can be devastating. In these situations productivity and customer satisfaction aren’t the only things at risk, so is security data for the company and its customers. To be aware of potential risks and security breaches, managers need to be aware by maintaining an overall digital infrastructure, hardware and software analysis checks, including all cloud-based solutions.
Don’t wait for something to come your way, the best thing you can do is plan ahead, preparation is always crucial, remember changes can occur at any time and can come in many forms. Check your internal policies and procedures documented to get another team ready to dive in.
If you want one less thing to worry about whether you are in a disaster prone area or it simply arrives unexpectedly, relying on call center services allows your business to stay afloat in the majority of emergencies or events, preventing money losses and maintaining consumer confidence in your company. Having a professional disaster recovery program with your BPO partners will ensure calling customers will be addressed by a professional Call Center Agents that will represent your brand the way you intend at any moment.
