Contingency Planning

Although we cannot foretell the future, we need to plan for it. Plan for things that could go wrong, and for things that could go exceptionally right.

by Brock Henderson Principal, Henderson & Associates [August 20, 2007]

Every Business Plan and Marketing Plan should include Contingency Planning for when the unthinkable happens, whether it's a natural disaster such as Katrina or the earthquakes in Japan last month; or a man-made problem such as 9-11 or a notorious accident in Baltimore six years ago.

It could even be an internal problem: your top engineer quits, your bookkeeper is laid up in the hospital for a couple of months, or perhaps it's you in the hospital (see Can Your ISP Pass the Bus Test?). Who picks up the slack?

Everyone in your company should know immediately what to do if something goes wrong, be it big or small. Not just you, not just your managers, everyone. Everyone needs to know whom to turn to and what to do.

Scenario planning
Let's start with something simple: your primary connection to the internet gets cut. Sure, the provider will act quickly to find and fix the cable, but what do you do in the meantime? Do you have at least one redundant connection to fall back on? You should.

Your electricity goes out. Do you have a backup generator capable of keeping your air conditioning and equipment up and running normally? Typically, the electricity is only out for a few hours, but if the power grid gets damaged and goes down, can your generator handle your load requirements for a week or a month until service is restored?

What happens if a natural disaster damages your facilities so that you can't work there? Where do you go? Where will tech support work? Many employees would be able to work from home, but are you set up to allow that if you need to enable it?

Depending on where you live, all the roads could be closed by a blizzard or a mudslide or a flood or a hurricane. Will tech support be able to log in and continue to help customers?

Most of the small to medium ISPs have only one person taking care of the books. What do you do if they have emergency surgery and are incapacitated for several weeks? Does anyone else know how to send out invoices and pay the bills?

You will face one of these or have faced one already
Here's one I've seen happen a couple of times: a vendor receives your payment but accidentally fails to properly give you credit for the payment. They threaten to cut you off if they don't receive payment immediately. Can you quickly and easily locate the cancelled check? If your accountant is in the hospital, can anyone else fine it? That may not be a big deal unless the vendor is your backbone provider.

When you are out of town on a much deserved vacation (do you remember what those are?) who in your organization can make decisions in your absence? Is there a dollar limit on what they can do or buy? Who signs checks? Do they know where the checkbook is?

Your chief engineer gets tired of being paged every night to come in and fix something and quits. Who fills the gap? Is anyone else knowledgeable enough to immediately step in and take over? Someone should be, but not all ISPs have gotten around to insuring that the #2 has the knowledge to easily step in and take over.

Equipment dies. Do you have a replacement part on hand or do you have to overnight a spare in? If it happens on the weekend, you may not be able to get hold of a supplier until Monday, so you should have back-up parts and equipment on site and ready to be quickly plugged in. Granted, you may go for years with the spare equipment just sitting there doing nothing, but equipment never fails at a convenient time—so be prepared!

It's time for invoicing customers and you discover that you are out of invoices. The printer can't get more to you for three or four days,. Do you wait? Probably the best way to handle this is to have previously arranged with the printer to print and hold a back-up order for you so that when you need more invoices or envelopes or whatever, they can get that stored back-up order to you immediately and print another back-up supply at their convenience. (Most of the printers I know will be willing to do this, though some may not have the physical space to store your back-up supply. But it's an idea worth discussing with your printer.)

Contingency Planning shouldn't be limited to negative events, what happens if suddenly demand for access, hosting, or other services goes up dramatically? Can you quickly and easily satisfy the demand? If you think that can't happen, think again. For example, your competition gets hacked and is down for a week or two and their customers come to you. Are you able to help? (This happened to a local ISP a few years back.)

Some customers will stick with you regardless, but they shouldn't have to suffer because you failed to plan. You've heard the saying, "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail".

Sit down with your team and brainstorm every conceivable thing that could possibly go wrong (or exceptionally right) and then come up with solutions. Cover everything from the mundane to the cataclysmic. You may never be faced with a disaster on the level of Katrina, but you should be ready just in case.

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