Communications service to protect your revenue and reputation in a crisis

As the World Health Organisation raises its pandemic alert over swine flu, and warns of an increased threat later this year, organisations are asking what they can do to reduce any business disruption in the event of a full blown pandemic.

Expert opinion is reported as saying that the current threat is not expected to peak until the UK flu season begins in the autumn. Should it occur, a large scale pandemic could dramatically impact the ability of organisations to conduct business normally. Under current planning scenarios, the period of threat posed by a pandemic could be up to 16 weeks, and could require staff to work from home for long periods.

Not only is there a possibility of government mandates to send staff home, organisations also have a duty of care to employees to ensure that they provide a workplace that is free from harm. The nature of the pandemic may make this a challenge, and organisations should anticipate that large number of staff may place additional requests to work from home wherever possible.

Furthermore, compliance to the new BS25999 standard for business continuity will place greater strains on the Board and the entire organisation as it tries to accommodate the requirements to conduct business normally while trying to accommodate the need for staff to work outside of the corporate offices for perhaps long periods.

While some organisations are already equipped to have staff working from home, and have adopted flexible working practices for cost-saving and resilience reasons, many others have not. However, during a period of pandemic, it is vital for communication to be maintained, not only with customers and communities, but across the organisation, between employees, partners, suppliers and other stakeholders.

Is your business fully prepared for the unexpected?

BT Voice Continuity Directed Recovery

BT Voice Continuity Directed Recovery puts you in direct control of all your call-routing, so that should staff have to work outside of the corporate office for long periods, then their ability to take calls from customers, partners and suppliers isn't impacted.

With BT Voice Continuity, you keep your existing telephone numbers, and in normal operation calls flow normally. However, the service provides an easy to use web portal whereby you can pre-build up to 5 alternate routing plans, and at any point you can invoke the service and have your calls routed according to the plan you have selected. This may be to route individual calls to staff working from remote offices, from home or to their mobile phones.

Furthermore, the service provides announcement and information lines so that staff and customers can have one number to be kept informed as the situation evolves. In this way, BT Voice Continuity assures communication between staff, customers and suppliers to ensure that while the business may be undergoing a period of stress, the impact of this is significantly reduced.

Enhance your resilience further with Personal Call Routing

One of the problems with pre-building call plans is the effort to keep these continuously up to date, and also that as events evolve it may be impossible to plan for the unplannable. With Personal Override, your staff are given one telephone number that they can dial in and change their own call-routing. In this way, no matter where staff are working during a pandemic they are put in the driving seat as to where their calls are routed.

Benefits and features at a glance

• Individually route the existing DDI range on a call-by-call basis to wherever staff are located, including their home or mobile phones.
• Call routing plans are set up and managed through an easy-to-use web portal.
• Up to 5 plans can be available at any one time, with instant plan selection through a touch-tone phone.
• Enables faxes to be received automatically through email, reducing the need for staff to attend the office in person.
• Provide a series of information and announcement lines, both for staff and for customers to keep them apprised of the current situation.
• Simple and fast to setup, easy to change.
• Requires no CapEx and no new hardware or software to install.
• Works with any PBX or iPBX
• Supports DDI numbers on ISDN30e, Featurenet 1000 or Featurenet 5000 lines

Online demonstration of BT Voice Continuity

Watch a short online demonstration of the capabilities of BT Voice Continuity.