by Steven Fitzgerald, Chief Technical Officer, Consistacom
Here in the far north of Michigan we see signs of spring. That means storms with wet, heavy snow are surely coming to disrupt utility service. We routinely check our generator and make sure both diverse common carrier services are running without error. Those are obvious items for continuity checklists. Everyone from the janitor to the CEO understands you need power and dial-tone to keep the business going. Testing the generator is easy; it starts and you either have lights or it fails.
Knowing the contact center is ready for a disaster is much harder. Having dial-tone doesn’t mean you are ready to deal with one. My personal experience is that a large center of seven to fifteen thousand seats will have only one or two team members who understand how all the pieces necessary to maintain full service fit together. If only two people understand, how can the enterprise hope to implement and maintain a bullet-proof plan to keep running when the unexpected happens? And if those people are taken out of the picture by the disaster, how do the others objectively judge whether the center is working properly? And finally the really big question – how do you test the plan?
The only practical answer is automation. Use an automated tool to check that your backup telephone ACDs have the correct configuration as soon as a design change is implemented on main systems. An automated inspector has to check for and repair backup system changes in violation of the continuity plan. Implement an automated method of changing post-disaster agent connections to a surviving ACD. Implement an automated documentation system that ensures you always have up-to-date, accurate, easy-to-understand descriptions of present call flow programs. Finally, test the plan regularly.
The need for these capabilities is hard to argue with, so why do hardly any enterprises have them? The inability to easily and safely stage a test disaster with legacy tools is a big factor. That leaves corporate leadership with only the hopeful assurances of telecom management.
I also run into the false ROI argument: “I cannot prove my present plan is working, but if you want to sell me something that can be easily tested it has to cost less than what I am doing.” Then there is the all or nothing approach: “I won’t buy your stuff that solves 80% of my problem. Until you solve 100%, I will live with a 0% solution.”
Dreaming for your perfect solution won’t make it happen. Embrace business continuity automation now. The solutions are available and pay for themselves.
Contact the author at tooltalk@consistacom.com.
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