Business Telephone Continuity Planning - How to develop a well-rounded plan for emergencies

Business Continuity is a prime ingredient in any business's recipe for success. Your Business Continuity Plan is your insurance policy should anything happen that could affect your business; a building fire, a local disaster, bad weather, whatever it may be. We've condensed the Business Continuity Plan down into 5 main steps, one of which can be deemed optional, but all 5 are integral to a successful plan. The steps are analysis, design, implementation, testing and maintenance.

The first step, analysis, is all about the assessment of what incidents or occurrences could have an adverse affect on your business. We deem this as anything that could affect the day to day running of your business or incur charges or loss of money that is deemed unacceptable. An example would be failure of your telephone system, power cuts, and the possibility of customers not being able to contact your business because your receptionist staff are unable to answer calls.

Next up is the 'design' phase of your plan. For each incident that you have identified from your analysis, come up with a suitable, cost effective solution that will successfully limit the damage. Again, referring back to the previous 'technical' example, you could take out a Virtual Switchboard Service, where an external company would take all of your calls in your company name, and patch or take messages as needed. This would limit the damage as normal service to your customers would be maintained.

The implementation stage is fairly self explanatory. For each 'design' that counters the problems defined in the 'analysis,' you should ensure that each design can be fulfilled by setting up services, implementing your back-up plans and such.

The one possible optional step mentioned above is the 'testing' phase. In some instances, it isn't possible to test all of your continuity plans. Where applicable, test your back-up services and routines to ensure that they function as desired.

The final phase of your plan should be the maintenance routine. Once your Business Continuity Plan has been defined, it is highly recommended to schedule time on a regular basis (be it monthly, quarterly, yearly, etc.) to test your back-up plans. This is one of the most integral steps as without maintaining your well-defined plans, they may fail in the event of an actual emergency, and all costs and time spent creating them will be defunct.

OfficeFront are a leading provider of Virtual Office, Virtual Switchboard and Business Continuity Services.

Download our Business Continuity Planning PDF.