Roberta Witty

The volcano eruption in Iceland that is currently spewing volcanic ash into the atmosphere is now shutting down air travel across Europe. Business travel is greatly disrupted in a number of areas: meetings, conferences, sales calls and so forth are being put on hold or cancelled altogether.

What is your organization doing to assess the impact? Are you tracking your traveling workforce and helping them find alternate travel arrangements? And making alternate business operations plans such as having non-impacted staff step in to take the lead? Do you even have a workforce continuity management program in place? (Gartner clients can read my research notes on the topic: Workforce Continuity Defined and Workforce Continuity: Best Practices for Workforce Management.)

Of even greater impact is the supply chain – critical goods may not be able to arrive when needed by the customer due to the cancellation of flights. Are you assessing your supply chain and determining the impact on meeting contractual obligations? Given that this a force majeure event, your business insurance coverage won’t apply most likely.

And what would happen in the US if something of this magnitude happened? The US doesn’t have the extensive ground transportation network that Europe does – at least for passenger travel. US firms would be impacted to an even larger extent most likely.

How many of you are looking to expand your remote work programs? How much of your business operations can be managed remotely? Ata  minimum, senior executives not able to return to the office should be equipped with remote work capability such as PDAs and wireless Internet access for remote system access into your firm’s VPN. The Prime Minister of Norway is doing just that -  Norway Prime Minister governs with the iPad.  (Gartner clients can read our research notes on telecommuting and remote access: Gartner’s Telework Action Plan is Key to Successful Implementations and Critical Questions to Ask Your VPN Provider About Rapid Licenses Capability.)

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Category: BCM and IT DRM Research Coverage     Tags: Availability Risk, Business Continuity Management, Business Continuity Planning, Business Impact Analysis, Business Resiliency, Crisis Management, Disaster Recovery, Incident Management, IT Disaster Recovery, Mass Notification, Recovery Planning, Workforce Continuity

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