Meetings Cancelled- It’s Snow joke

The recent bout of harsh weather conditions brings into sharp relief once again the need to properly consider two areas of telecommunications contingency planning to cover:
 

Cancelled Meetings

Consider videoconferencing as an acceptable alternative
1. Technology means that with now ever increasing broadband data speeds and reliability a reasonable quality of service can be obtained no matter where you are.
2. Staff are familiar with this form of technology at a consumer level eg MSN, Skype, such that transition to using more developed B2B systems is not a quantum leap.
3. Videoconferencing acts as a viable alternative where travel can’t be made, due to severe weather for example, but also consider the pure cost saving opportunity through lack of travel time and costs. A very quick R.O.C. is usually produced when Videoconferencing is adopted.
4. Additionally the ecological impact of travel should not be ignored either.

Staff not making it into work- contingency planning

Businesses should consider what happens to customer service when staff are unable to make it into work:
How does a business continue to receive and deal with inbound calls?

1. Current levels of technology should allow staff to work from home in a seemless way, but many businesses have not yet fully explored the potential.
2. New technology extends not only to telephony but to systems integration as well such that calls can be taken at home as if in the office and business databases can also be made available to allow transactions to take place.
3. Consider how easily can calls be transferred from usual numbers to alternatives when needed.
4. What is the call flow flexibility when staff are not in one central point?
5. There is nothing worse than a customer’s call or new business opportunity not being answered.
6. Those businesses which are able to continue virtually as normal stand out from the crowd.
7. These businesses additionally do not suffer significant profit erosion as they are able to continue to trade at near normal levels.

A proper professional assessment of current processes is recommended as whilst many companies have IT contingency plans we often find that alternative arrangements for telecommunications are sadly lacking in most businesses and if they do exist it’s only at such a nominal level, not to be worthwhile.
Finally on this point it’s not just about weather, consider illness, power failure, complete building inaccessibility as equal reasons to properly plan

The aim of this article is to simply raise awareness again of this important area, not give generic recommendations, given a bespoke solution is ideally required for each business, considering the industry, number of sites, staff and customer levels involved, to name a few criterion.

The Expense Reduction Analysts Communications Team are able to work with clients to assess these important issues.