Tag: Insurance

What’s the difference between Business Continuity (BC) and Disaster Recovery (DR)?

What’s the difference between Business Continuity (BC) and Disaster Recovery (DR)? This is a question I have had to answer multiple times. It is a very good question and the answer is not simple! So, as a good lazy ‘techy’, I tried to find the answer on the web. That way, when I am asked, all I would have to do is send a link.

I have used this approach multiple times for other questions I have received. It is convenient and a great way to avoid re-typing an answer. However, this time, I was not very successful in my quest to find an answer. I searched the web, multiple times, for hours without finding the perfect “pre-written answer” I was looking for. So I decided to stop being lazy and write it myself.

Now, if you are like me, and you’ve been looking for an answer to this question, feel free to use this one.

So, let’s start with a few definitions from the Business Continuity Institute (BCI) Glossary:

Disaster Recovery (DR): “The strategies and plans for recovering and restoring the organizations technological infrastructure and capabilities after a serious interruption. Editor’s Note: DR is now normally only used in reference to an organization’s IT and telecommunications recovery.”

Business Continuity (BC): “The strategic and tactical capability of the organization to plan for and respond to incidents and business disruptions in order to continue business operations at an acceptable predefined level.”

First, I’d like to say that I have a slightly different view of DR than BCI. Now, who am I to disagree with what BCI is saying? Well, bear with me a little longer and you will see how my interpretation of DR might help people understand the differences between DR and BC better. So here’s my definition:DR is the strategies and plans for recovering and restoring the organizations (scratch technological) infrastructures and capabilities after an interruption (regardless of the severity).

Unlike the BCI, I don’t make a distinction between the technological infrastructure and the rest of the infrastructures (the buildings for example) and nor I do differentiate between the types of interruptions. In my opinion, either a system is down or a building is burnt or flooded, both should be considered a disaster and therefore both require a disaster recovery plan.

Therefore DR is the action of fixing a failing, degraded or completely damaged infrastructure. For example, the 2nd floor of a building was on fire; the fire is now out so the initial crisis is over. Now the damage caused by fire must be dealt with; there is water and smoke on the 2nd floor, the 3rd floor has damages caused by smoke and the 1st floor has water damage. The cleanup, replacement of furniture, repair of the building and its structure, painting, plastering, etc. are all part of the disaster recovery plan.

What is Business Continuity then? Business Continuity is how you continue to maintain critical business functions during that crisis. Back to the example, when the fire started, the alarm went off and people were evacuated from the building. Let say you had a Call Center on the 2nd floor and this just happens to be a critical area of your business. How would you continue to answer calls while people are being evacuated? How would you answer calls while the building is being inspected, repaired or rebuilt? Keeping the business running during this time is what I call Business Continuity.

The same approach can be taken with a system crash or when the performance of a system has degraded to the point that it has impacted business operations. So fixing the system is DR and the action of keeping the business operations running without the system being available is BC.

In conclusion, BC is all about being proactive and sustaining critical business functions whatever it takes whereas DR is the process of dealing with the aftermath and ensuring the infrastructure (system, building, etc.) is restored to the pre-interruption state.

Should Business Strategy be Influenced by Technological Considerations?

Submitted by phay on Fri, 11/04/2011 – 09:01

Can business strategy be created in isolation of the technology considerations? There is a widespread belief in the Business Community that Business Strategy comes first and then technology follows in some way to support that business.

In my experience the common perception among organizations is that Business defines its strategy first and then technology enables the strategy.

Strategy Development Process:

In order to explore the role technology plays in shaping and supporting the business, let’s look at how strategies are developed.  There has been a significant amount of research done and published in understanding how strategies are developed.  Here are some relevant highlights.

There are two main dimensions to strategy development.

  1. Visionary thinking based on intuition, a sense, an ability to make bold predictions and define goals.
  2. Strategy development is largely based on scientific analysis, considering options and recommendations based on the analysis followed by implementation.
    • Strategic Analysis guided by scientific approach understanding your markets, competitors, value chain, bargaining power of the key stakeholders.  It also entails understanding the strengths and weaknesses of your organization against the opportunities and threat that the external environment presents
    • Strategy Formulation guided by analytical findings, alignment to the vision and overall goals of the organization to create a strategic road-map
    • Strategy Implementation is of course converting the strategy to real results by successfully implementing the strategy

It is the strategy development that is the focus of this article. Specifically, strategic analysis which then guides the strategy formulation and implementation.

Is there a place for technological consideration in strategic analysis? The answer is quite apparent as demonstrated through examples next.

Technological Influences on the Business Landscape

Examples of technologies that have had transformation impact on business value chain and have redefined markets and distribution channels are all around us.

The globalization phenomenon enabled by the internet is one of most profound. The Internet has impacted all the traditional dimensions of business strategy (reduction in barriers to entry, increased market size across the globe without limitations of geographic divide, increased competition etc.).

Financial services industry is a prime example of an industry where technology has transformed the value chain, redefined competitive forces and given the consumers tremendous amount of bargaining power.  Entry barrier have been declining, new competitor have emerged. Some financial products and services have become more transparent and commodities making the market more competitive. Internet as a tool to create a new service delivery channel (reduced channel costs, 24 by7 availability) has put pressure on the more traditional branch based channels. The resulting service delivery cost structure has changed. ING is operating on the model that bricks and mortar are not required to sell its banking products and services.

Healthcare value chain has been transformed by technological advances, linking healthcare records through electronic information exchange, diagnostic imaging from traditional film based to digital imaging has redefined the value chain and changed the balance of power between the suppliers, buyers not to mention the very nature of the products and services being delivered.

Retail Industry is another such example where technology has changed the business landscape.  Amazon’s strategic business model was completely defined by technology.

Relationship between Business and Technology

Given how profoundly technology has influenced our business and personal lives, it is hard to fathom how a successful business strategy can be defined without considering technological influences and enablers.  By creating a partnership between Business and Technology at the Strategy development stage, you are creating a strategy that is well formed and can maximize business value and competitive positioning by embedding technological considerations from the very start (and not an after thought!).

So why is it that there is a significant divide between the Business and Technology?  In subsequent articles, I will focus on why there is this barrier (real or perceived) that creates this divide between Business and Technology.

If you have examples to demonstrate the benefits of business/technology partnerships, please share your thoughts on this forum.

Attacking ECM complexity

Submitted by Martin Sumner-Smith on Tue, 09/21/2010 – 14:34

In my last post I discussed the inherent complexity that develops as ECM systems are used for an increasing range of business applications, and more importantly, as they are shaped by growing numbers of users and groups with differing perspectives. Another source of complexity is technology itself.The term ‘Enterprise Content Management’ was developed to try to describe the result of the convergence of a wide range of previously distinct technologies – document scanning, records management, document management, workflow, collaboration, archiving, etc. This convergence was a result of technology and market maturation, and the fact that these technologies generally addressed common business needs and dealt with the key digital files (i.e. content) that have value to enterprises.Enterprises need to treat content in standard ways and make it available to their users irrespective of technology. Since all of the component technologies cannot realistically be re-written, they must be made to work together. This need was the genesis of the Open Text ECM Suite released today.On the face of it, adding more features increases complexity. However, sharing resources and services counters that. Making available a better tool also reduces the necessity of warping a simpler application to serve a requirement for which it is not suited.ECM Suite not only provides a wider range of capabilities, but also updates the interfaces of some core elements, especially including the new version of Open Text Content Server – version 10. This version (of a product once called Livelink) includes a modernized interface, which is simpler. When you are trying to drive user adoption, simpler interfaces are better if they enable users to learn how to use a system quicker. But simplification can remove things that veteran users have come to rely on, and you need to guide them through the changes as I discussed previously.I’m looking forward to the new things that are now enabled with the Suite. I’ll be embracing reduced technical complexity while accepting potentially greater operational complexity. Other people have other perspectives (video).Syndicated at http://conversations.opentext.com/

Content Matters

Submitted by Martin Sumner-Smith on Thu, 08/12/2010 – 12:31

I was chatting with a colleague yesterday and he related how he interviews people to join our company. We quickly dropped into role playing – with me as the job candidate. He had a compelling proposition, but as I told him, he was missing the thing that excited me = Content Matters!

As I started to tell him why content matters I found myself getting excited. I realized I’m actually quite passionate about it! Not content itself, but what it enables and how it’s used.

Content matters to companies in a way that changes how they work, how they create value and whether they succeed. It matters whether they recognize that fact or not.

If you want to understand what drives a company look at their value chain – how they create value – and how they are organized to execute each stage in the value chain. Within each stage there are typically many processes, each with many steps. At almost every step there is some content that is created, reviewed, followed or otherwise used; how well this is done makes a difference to effectiveness.

It’s no surprise to people that you can understand a business by ‘following the money’ or ‘following the customer’ and that is the basis for ERP and CRM systems.

On the other hand most people are only just coming to realize that ‘following the content’ is just as important, so while we’ve talked about content management for many years, that conversation is starting to be important to business.

Customer Community Success Metrics for 2009

Submitted by Martin Sumner-Smith on Fri, 12/18/2009 – 14:28

Customer communities are all the rage nowadays, but it is not always clear what works and indeed how to measure success.As 2009 draws to a close we have been reviewing how Open Text customer communities have been doing.Background: For those not familiar with Open Text, we are a vendor of enterprise-class software to manage digital files (called content). The term enterprise indicates that we sell to organizations not consumers. We have relatively few customer organizations, but they are often typically some of the biggest organizations in business and government. We estimate that at least 1 in 3 Internet users visit sites that run our software! The software we use for our own communities is the same as we sell. The SitesFor historic reasons, we run three primary community sites (requiring membership) in addition to our typical corporate websites. The community sites are:

  • Open Text Knowledge Centre (KC)
    • Primarily for system administrators of the software we sell
  • Open Text Developer Network (OTDN) which is housed on the KC
    • Primarily for developers using Open Text APIs
  • Open Text Online Communities
    • Primarily for business champions and power users

Site Metrics

  1. The Knowledge Centre is by far the oldest community, dating back to 1996! As you’d expect, it has the most members and the most ongoing activity. Every day approximately 4,000 users access the site, and between 150,000-200,000 documents downloads are performed every month!
  2. OTDN just completed its first full year during which just over 3,200 unique users participated over the past year
  3. Online Communities got started in its present form in 2005. This last year 10,600 members collectively visited 118,000 times over the year

These numbers only measure direct participation. As you might expect, many community members participate through email-mediated discussions.ConvergenceMultiple systems have traditionally meant that there are multiple, disconnected silos of information. As a result, users don’t know where to look and administrators have to duplicate critical content between systems.A better approach is to deploy a single, ‘enterprise library’ of digital files (content) which contains all of the files, but just one active copy of each. The three sites above will soon converge to use the same enterprise library, which will also be used by our corporate website that is open to the general public.One single repository can make user navigation harder unless the most relevant content is presented and organized in a fashion that best meets the needs of each type of user (i.e. persona). Communities of users with similar interests or jobs are one approach to organizing content, but of course there are others, including personalization based on the activities and preferences of specific users.Measuring 2010 successThese communities will continue to develop, but the latest social networking approaches provide new ways to surface important content. As we deploy more social networking approaches during 2010 we’ll have a solid base of community metrics from 2009 to judge progress. As you might expect, activities on external sites like twitter, YouTube and facebook are becoming increasingly important.Syndicated at http://conversations.opentext.com/