Continuity depends on more than just your organisation, it relies on a network of key suppliers and providers. Does your BCP factor in these parties? Have you considered what the knock-on effect would be if their BCPs are not Covid-19 proof? In our area of business, suppliers play a crucial role in ongoing operations and it is vital to consider this service as part of a BCP.
What you can do to ensure your suppliers’ BCPs are Covid-19 proof
The effect of the Covid-19 on your suppliers is significant to both you and them, especially when it comes to connectivity. Simply put, you need a business solution and you need a provider whose BCP is also Covid-19 proof. Your BCP is only as good as your suppliers’ BCPs.
To ensure your providers are prepared, review all your existing arrangements and establish that they can continue to deliver against SLAs. Here are some easy steps you can take:
- Set up Google Alerts for all your providers. What are they publishing about Covid-19?
- If ASX listed, check their communications history on the ASX website. Reporting season has just wrapped up so you can see the financial position of any ASX listed business a month ago.
- Make sure you have a redundancy plan. Have multiple options and suppliers where possible to reduce risk of too much resting with a single point of failure.
- Pay your bills on time. In these financially challenging times, it is important to do what you can for your suppliers. If you are having financial issues, talk to your suppliers. Are they able to help?
- Communicate clearly, with your suppliers and customers, what you are doing to mitigate risk and lessen the effect as much as possible.
- If you have doubts about your supplier do something, at the very least talk to them, ask them the hard questions, can you guarantee my service for the next 9 months? If so, how?
What the Orion team have done to strengthen our, and consequently our customers, BCP’s
To protect our business and customers we have enacted our BCP to ensure we can continue to supply reliable, critical, remote connectivity.
From a network infrastructure perspective, we are in a strong position due to being an infrastructure owner operator. Our network is fully redundant and in addition to this, we have three earth stations in NSW, WA and New Zealand We have followed the above steps to ensure all our suppliers’ BCPs meet our required standards.
Our staff, based primarily in Perth and Sydney, have all been working from home for the past two weeks and 50% of our staff have been working from home for three weeks. These staff focus on servicing our Australian and New Zealand customers and are supported by our global network, which includes staff and infrastructure in 14 countries across the globe.
Despite the distance between us, we have established regular communications with all team members, via daily scrums and our Friday afternoon drinks! Staff also receive regular HR emails and a weekly broadcast from our Managing Director. This ensures that we maintain transparency with our team and provide assurance.
We have not implemented any reduced working hours, requested staff to take leave or made any redundancies. Quite the opposite in fact, as we have recruited new staff members in the last four weeks. Whilst the onboarding process is a little different to usual, they are settling in well. Ongoing recruitment is a testament to our sound financial position. This is backed up by our parent company, Thaicom.
Our consumer division has benefited from increase in demand in home internet usage and we are currently collaborating with the NBN around how we extend the service and increase the bandwidth.
At Orion, we recognise that we are fortunate to be in such a strong financial position and realise that not everyone is. We already have hardship policies in place to assist struggling customers and we are maintaining regular communications them. We are committed to helping our customers weather the storm and return to business as usual once this passes.
Do you want to know more about Orion’s BCP?
At Orion, we have taken the above measures and more to ensure our BCP is completely Covid-19 proof. If you have any questions about our BCP or how we may be able to assist with your BCP, get in touch today.