I’ve been spending a bit of time looking at internet marketing for the business over the past weeks and google adwords campaigns for particular services that we offer and have been struck by a couple of findings which I thought I’d share.

Firstly, the cost per click of various words and phrases relating to business continuity is very high; driven by small numbers of searches and big corporate budgets from IT behemoths who are trying to sell business continuity on the back of their disaster recovery and data recovery services – even if they aren’t experienced in BCM work.

Secondly, the number of companies masquerading as business continuity or resilience consultants who are actually selling either a telephony solution or an office automation solution (e mail, MS office and data back-up/recovery) is worryingly high.  The poor old consumer has to wade through pages of expensively delivered pay per click adverts from companies that appear ill-placed to offer a pragmatic business continuity service based on practical experience who are in fact just trying to cash-in on a “trend” whilst their core business has become saturated with competitors.

Thirdly, there are a bunch of other companies again spending large sums on PPC or with decent organic search results due to early adoption of snappy URLs that include the keywords “business continuity”, “resilience” and “consultant” or variations thereof who seem to be peddling a bit of pointless software or a variety of templates that they have cleverly cobbled together from the earlier work they did in IT.  These software and template peddlers are relying on the FEAR factor whereby searchers are looking for a quick, tick-box solution to satisfy the auditors or the new customer who has asked to see their business continuity plan.  The reality is that these “quick” solutions take an age to complete and aren’t worth the electronic or hard copy paper they are written on once the tenacious junior or senior staff finally flog their way through them.  It’s a classic left-brain, over-analytical approach to a problem that requires a more creative, strategic and multi-disciplinary approach.  In technical terms, it’s a FAIL.

So how does a potential customer find a proven and experienced business continuity consultancy?

Here are my top tips:

1. Scan through the copy and rule out IT and Telephony companies who are chancing their arm.
2. Rule out insurers who are simply trying to cross-sell.  Remember their core business model is to convince you that you can ”transfer” the risk by insuring against the loss.  The reality is you still lose, they don’t like to pay and it’s better to avoid the loss in all cases – so avoid that strategy and their offerings except in very specific cases.
3. Look at the background experience of the company and it’s consultants.  Are they re-tread jacks of all trades with lots of letters after their names like FBCI and MBCI (which bright consultants do in a week by paying the institute and completing a multi-choice exam) or have they actually held real responsibility within a similar organisation to yours delivering operational or strategic business activities?
4. Are they thought-leaders or sheep?  What do their blog posts and case studies reveal?  Are they all fluff and no substance?
5. Are they trumpeting their latest “award” from some institution or august body?  The reality is that these awards are effectively bought by big companies who can afford the resources to staff a campaign and submit the bid while others (like us) are actually doing the work with large organisations on a daily basis – we don’t have the time or the egoistic desire for 3rd party, public recognition.  Our past customers are our fan base.
6. What language are they using?  IS it forward looking “resilience” or old-fashioned “disaster recovery”.
7. What is the breadth and depth of their experience?  Do they cover all risks or just phones and computers?  Are they knowledgeable on CBRNE and cyber security or just the tech stuff?  Can they talk knowledgeably about the spectrum of business risks from financial to people?

In the end you must make you own choice based on the information that you have – just like in an emergency, but hopefully this has given you some food for thought.

I am always happy to discuss how we differ from our competitors and equally happy to pass clients on to other providers who offer a better fit – we don’t do data-centres, insurance policies and phones but we know great people who do and if that’s what you need, we’ll gladly introduce you.

Wouldn’t it be great if everyone else thought like that?

Yours in resilience,

@Veterus

I caught the early train to London this morning after a 5am start in order to get to London Waterloo station by 0800.

A single train broke down on one stretch of track and disrupted several trains and probably several hundreds of commuters’ plans.

The train was diverted via a different route and we ended up arriving about half an hour late (on a 1hr 4o journey) which is about a 25% overrun on the planned activity.

The cost of everyone’s time, rescheduling meetings, possibily missing other travel connections including international flights and trains would likely have been in the tens of thousands (if anyone could measure it) but because the impact is dispersed into the community and people are by and large too busy of resigned to complain effectively, the rail operators are unlikely to do anything to improve their contingency and recovery plans for similar scenarios in future.

Granted, it is quite a feat of engineering to recover a train if it is derailed but when it is still on the track surely it’s just a question of speeding another motor along to push or pull it on to the next station, disembark passengers if necessary and then stick the broken bit in a siding until the rush hour is passed?  Or fixing it in situ.

It isn’t as though a train breaking down is a difficult to predict outcome for a rail operator?  It’s hardly a 7/7 scenario.

So is the rail system resilient?  One might argue (unconvincingly in my book) that by having the ability to divert other trains via another length of track around the problem that the network is “resilient enough” and one might also point to the costs involved in laying track, planning difficulties and so forth as excuses for a sub-standard performance in a developed country but none of these really wash.

I’m pretty convinced that the “by-pass” option was a happy coincidence since many parts of the network are choke points which if they failed would stop traffic dead.

As far as costs and planning as concerned, that argument is also dead in the water.  Just look at how much the govenrment has spent on the contingency of procuring millions of doses of H1N1 vaccine and the planning requirements to site the olympic park in London.  If there is a will there is a way.

The problem is that the UK is becoming a society where we expect underperformance.  We see and feel it everyday and the government spins its way out of failure so regularly and unashamedly that we now have a culture of  second best from the top down.

Instead of candidly facing the facts we get briefings that accentuate the positive – “we are going to prioritise innoculations to the highest priority groups” – in other words “we haven’t got enough vaccine for you lot so we will make sure we get ours and then appear to support a “vulnerable group” so you feel bad and can be pilloried if you complain”.

Similar problems exist in resilience, contingency and recovery planning across the road networks.

I was stuck on an arterial road for 6 hours a few weeks ago because of a car transporter fire.  Now admitedly it was a pretty big fire but half a dozen fire appliances with foam should have sorted it out in an hour or so allowing recovery from the site shortly thereafter to minimise the rubber-necking queue.  They could also have prevented cars from joining the queue by putting in effective diversions asap.  There are plenty of signs advising us of speed traps and not to drive while tired so why can’t we sort out a simple road disruption?  The answer is because there is a lack of will and a lack of resources – all the coppers are tyring to catch you using your mobile whilst stuck in a slow moving city centre queue to appease the strident lobbyists who’ve made telephoning or eating whilst driving worse than war crimes.

When transport disruptions occur, everyone affected puts their contingency plans in place (the mobile phone), rearranges their schedule, takes the loss on the chin and accepts that Britain isn’t what it used to be – like the football team, the banks, the politicians, their pensions, healthcare and so on.

Several years ago I used to work in the nuclear weapon business.  We had and still have pretty good plans in place to move them around the country or recover them if they fall of a truck somewhere.  The difference is the political impact and the perceived size of the hazard when a nuclear weapon is involved (which is infintessimally small unless someone nicks it).

In the policeman’s view a stationary queue of traffic is a safe queue of traffic – they can wait, we’ve got evidence to collect, paperwork to do and a shift changeover coming up.

Tax payers?   They can wait – keep their heads down but make sure theykeep paying their taxes.  It’s the MATRIX!

As the first wave of swine flu eases without causing a great deal of disruption there may be people out there thinking that, like the millenium bug, the “crisis” was over-blown?

Certainly in the northern hemisphere we seem to have escaped much of the potential harm -perhaps due to the early action taken to warn and inform the pubic and encourage good personal hygien practice.

Whilst most of the unfortunate deaths were of people with underlying health conditions, a significant portion (5 out of 8 last week) had no underlying symptoms – so there is no time for complacency!

Pandemics normally come in 3 phases.  The last bird flu pandemic in 1918 had 2 waves of flu then a third wave of palsy when the virus affected the brain rather than the lungs.  It is entirely possible that we could see a similar pattern with H1N1.

I believe that we will see a second more severe wave of H1N1 flu around Christmas as people gather for social functions.  The virus may by then have mixed and changed as it travels around the southern hemisphere (where cases continue to grow) and perhaps be either more or less deadly than the strain that we have seen so far – especially if it mixes with H5N1 “bird flu”.

So is it too late for businesses to prepare a flu plan?  Of course not.  A decent flu plan can be crafted by someone with prior experience in a matter of days.  The process is based on the British Standard for Business Continuity BS25999 but whereas this encourages the development of a Business Continuity Management System, you would only need to consider a few threats (ie not just absence but things like supply chain disruption etc).

Using our copyrighted Business MEDIC approach, we could develop an outline plan in one day, exercise it in another day and deliver a validated plan the following day.  If you have 3 days, you can have a plan that will considerably reduce the impact of pandemic flu on your business.

Please tell colleagues and business owners that you know about this service and help them protect their livelihood.  In a global recession, they may need all the help they can get.

@Veterus

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