Press

Were you prepared for the unexpected?

The bad weather highlighted that many of Britain’s businesses are unprepared in the event of a crisis and once again, demonstrating how important business continuity planning is to companies, whatever the nature of their business. Neil Stephenson, CEO at Onyx Group, which provides disaster recovery and business continuity to firms across the UK, believes that businesses really need to take stock from the recent snow storm that’s hit the country.

“Adverse conditions, such as bad weather, are typical examples of why contingency planning is something all businesses need to do, as you can never predict when you are going to be caught short. It’s no surprise the FSB are calling for a review of UK business disaster recovery plans - the way the recent weather affected business productivity has shown that business continuity is still not being taken seriously enough and, as a result, is only discussed when the worst case scenario becomes a reality. It’s not just about ensuring that staff are able to get to work in the face of disruption, but also telecommunications is an important factor. Many businesses don’t have a back up telecoms network in place that they could switch to if their main line went down. Everyday we work with a range of companies, explaining why it is vital business continuity holds just as much importance as other aspects of running a business such as revenue generation, business development and employee issues and help them put robust contingency plans in place, including telecoms back up. Bad weather conditions should be a very basic incident that companies can workaround yet the recent heavy snow has cost the British economy an estimated £600m a day, with almost six out 10 firms saying they suffered as a result of the snow.”

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