Customers top service continuity and availability priorities

According to recent research undertaken by HP, the vast majority of senior management are extremely confident in their organisation’s current service continuity capability – with over three quarters rating the quality either 4 or 5 out of 5. But what level of insight do line of business decision-makers really have into their companies’ BC&A capabilities? Is their confidence founded on hard evidence, or simply on the absence of serious BC&A failures to date?

Heading the priority for service continuity investments is customer service, primarily the provision of 24/7 access to the information that underpins customer focused activity. As one Director of Customer Programmes explains: “Customers expect that [24/7 availability], the rest of our competitors do that. If we don’t we will lose customers. That is why we have online and telephone services available to our customers 24/7.”

Is this confidence well placed? According to one Operations Director, who rated the BC&A capability at 5: “We are confident in our systems so far because nothing has gone wrong and we hope nothing will go wrong.” Furthermore, how much responsibility for ensuring service continuity is being taken by senior line of business managers – or are they confidently relying on the IT team delivering a robust business environment at all times?

In fact, the research reveals a clear disconnect in business continuity and availability awareness: while some business managers are highly committed and involved in defining and monitoring policies, a worrying proportion find the issue completely irrelevant to their roles within the organisation. As a result, many business managers believe business continuity and availability challenges have no impact on their area of responsibility. The balance, however, confirms the impact could be significant, from inefficient customer interaction to lost revenue.

This lack of awareness and understanding across many respondents demonstrates a worrying level of complacency, especially given the audience’s awareness of service continuity. Indeed, while the majority can see no reason to review their attitudes to corporate service continuity, a couple happily point out that a major incident or negative publicity would prompt reassessment. By then, however, the damage is done - be it short-term loss of revenue or long-term damage to the organisation’s reputation and credibility.

If these senior managers are not involved in getting the business back up and running in the event of an incident, how can they expect IT to do it on their own? Who is undertaking the risk management assessment or determining the main priority areas for recovery – both people and information sources? Maintaining enterprise-wide BC&A extends well beyond the IT function, a fact that is often overlooked by business managers. Essential considerations such as relocation of personnel should be routinely rehearsed and evaluated, yet the HP survey respondents clearly view service continuity as an IT subject. Perhaps it really is time for business managers to re-assess their views on the subject, and to ensure their confidence is based on clearly visible systems and processes.

Rather than passing the buck to the IT team, the onus is on business managers to determine their own service continuity priorities and requirements. As well as using their organisations’ internal IT expertise, business managers can take external advice, leveraging risk analysis or business impact analysis to gain the insight required to determine the right service continuity solution for each line of business.

For further information contact Brian O’Gilvie, Business Continuity and Availability Manager, HP EMEA at Businesscontinuity@hp.com