These are challenging times as our country and the International community band together in the wake of the Coronavirus (COVID- 19) pandemic. As more businesses are asking employees to work from home a different and critical demand is being placed on IT infrastructure and support to enable normal business functions to continue.
If you do not yet have a business continuity plan in place, now is the time to act. Don’t leave it too late to understand your options and prepare. Some helpful tips from CIO Australia are as follows: (source)
- Identify the scope of the plan.
- Identify key business areas.
- Identify critical functions.
- Identify dependencies between various business areas and functions.
- Determine acceptable downtime for each critical function.
- Create a plan to maintain operations.
At TECHD, we have currently assisted or are in the process of assisting several of our clients in preparing their workforce to work remotely in “isolation mode”. Throughout this process, some helpful questions to consider are:
- Internet – Will my remote workers have access to an existing internet connection?
- Computers – Are your staff using laptops or desktops? Can these be relocated to alternate locations?
- Telephones – How will my staff answer the phones, transfer and make calls from home?
- Instant Messaging (IM) – Are you already using a solution (Teams, Slack)?
- Remote Meetings and Video Conferencing – How will you conduct remote meetings with staff and clients?
- Security – Will your IT security standards be maintained whilst working remotely?
- Files – Will your staff have access to the documents and information they require to do their job?
- Software Applications – Will these work remotely?
- Servers – Can these be accessed remotely?
We will continue to keep you updated on our own operations, where appropriate, and we are committed and hopeful that we can help our clients get through this very challenging time.
Please reach out at hello@techdgroup.com.au if you’d like the team at TECHD to discuss and provide advice on your best IT business continuity solution.
