SnowMaggedon 2010: Did you pass?

I have the feeling for the next few weeks I will be going around and asking the question "Did you pass the test?" I expect some to be confused by the question — what test?, and others I expect to have ready answers. For those who are confused, let me explain.

It's rare for organizations to run Business Continuity tests : they are disruptive, depressing, and generally cost money to fix what did not work. I have spent several months working with businesses to do contingency plans for H1N1 and what it would be like to operate their offices with people unable to come in for weeks or a month at a time. Well Mother Nature can be mischievous and this 2010 blizzard in the Mid Atlantic States (SnowMaggedon) has been a perfect, unscheduled test for business leaders.

If you're looking for a scoring guide for the test, let me provide some quick pass/fail indicators. If any of the following are true — you failed the test. How badly? You tell me — what was the cost to your business, staff, and schedules?

• Did your company cease operations for a week?
• Did you or your staff all find reasons to fly out of town or schedule a weekend at a ski resort before the first storm (OK — so this may just be smart thinking)?
• Was your revenue and profit for the week below target - or nil?
• Does the world know the home and cell phone numbers of all your employees now?
• Did you have a situation where you lost money because something you needed was in the office?
• Was employee communication limited to cell phones and email?
• Were meetings (internal and customer facing) rescheduled until next week?
• The trickiest question — despite having all the right technical tools, did people end up sitting around drinking hot chocolate at home and not get anything done?

Mavenspire's business focus is on managing and enhancing business plans with technology and we understand better than anyone that the true disasters are always the ones you DIDN'T SEE COMING. It's very hard to plan for something that you never imagine happening. It is also true that most organizations spend time and money on Disaster Recovery planning and very little time on Business Continuity. Disaster Recovery planning is a subset of Business Continuity — how do we recover when normal operations breaks down — but doesn't try to reach the goal of keeping the business running during a crisis. Continuity is achieved when people's everyday tools and processes aren't interrupted, regardless of the weather outside or the situation in the datacenter. Sure, there are going to be situations that require adaptation — in-person meetings may not happen if there is 6 ft of snow outside your door and you can't even find your car to dig it out — or if the people you're meeting with have their incoming flights canceled (that did happen to us; we opted not to do an online meeting and rescheduled, but we did at least have the option).

This week has been an affirmation of our planning, culture, and processes — most of our operations were not affected at all by the storms. We are a company that long ago solved the virtual / physical office paradox and created our world around the need to support customers in more than 10 countries and all over North America. Things that required a specific physical location like meetings or on-site testing were of course affected, as people were not able to drive and open the physical office. However, we still had a banner week with a huge upsurge in requests from new and existing customers to expand or enable virtual operations. If you take a look at Citrix this week, they have made a lot of money in new licensing for their XenApp product as people rushed to expand the ability to deliver services to employees stuck at home. We have certainly fielded a lot of questions from people who want to ensure "this never happens again". So let me share with you how Mavenspire weathered the storm and what you can do to plan for the future.

1. Culture and Process — All of our employees, from the technical engineers to the admin who sits at the front desk, know how to get their jobs done while not in the office. They have a mindset that makes telecommuting effective and are able not just to get to resources from anywhere but to really get WORK DONE from anywhere.
2. Paperless Office — We scan every piece of paper that goes through the office and make it available to those that need it. No need to go through a filing cabinet, just search for it in the online system.
3. Tier 1 Data Center — We learned a long time ago that our internal systems needed to survive ANYTHING. So, those systems are not at our offices, they are in tier 1 datacenters that boast generators (and prime fueling contracts), wet battery rooms bigger than my house, and weatherproof telecommunications.
4. SaaS — Some of our systems are "software as a service" and are delivered over the web. As long as we can see a browser, we can use our ERP, CRM, and ordering systems.
5. Unified Communication — With Voice over IP, Video Conferencing, Web Collaboration Platforms, and integrated private Instant Messaging (even on our cell phones) we are all connected to each other wherever we are, even if it's outside shoveling ridiculous amounts of snow (yep, did at least one call about a pending order while the other person was pitching snow over his shoulder).
6. Remote Access — We regularly manage and interact with our customers and partners through virtual means, so we have the pathway to continue external as well as internal work.

So — did you pass or fail? If you don't like the answer, give us a call.