Overview
Program Management, as directed by Executive Management, will organize staff, establish metrics, monitor and coordinate support and report the Enterprise Resiliency/Continuity Program activities: strategic, grand tactical and tactical.
Process Realignment
As companies strive to provide more service to a larger selection of clients, they often sacrifice efficiency for the sake of expediency. As a result, the new service may not utilize any of the existing systems or applications. If continued, corporations will have multiple applications performing up to 80% of the requirement, but no single application performing at 100%. Data is often re-entered into the different systems, compounding human error possibilities. Process realignment is a logical way to validate business efficiency.
The Eagle Rock Solution to realigning your processes:
Process realignment involves a concentrated review of a specific process:
- Selection of a core process that will ultimately affect other processes upstream
- Investigation of how information is collected for this process and how it is entered into the "system"
- Determination of what application(s) utilize this information and what the downstream dependencies are
- Determination of what other processes use this same information and whether the information must be manually entered in any other system
Efficient, cost-effective processes allow businesses to maintain their competitive advantage, with potential savings on infrastructure requirements in the production environment.
Third Party Recovery Planning
Outside service providers offer you the satisfaction of performing tasks/functions that you cannot or do not want to do yourself. Under normal circumstances, they perform their responsibilities fairly well. What happens to their level of service in the event of an emergency that affects their place of business? Will they be able to continue the same level of service for you during their time of crisis, or will service deteriorate (cease)? What does a stoppage of service mean to you?
The Eagle Rock Solution recovering outside service providers:
- Review and prioritize a list of outside service providers currently used by your corporation
- Review the type of service that is provided by each and the level to which they must guarantee service
- Visit the service provider's facilities, where appropriate, to evaluate their business practices under normal conditions
- Review the contingency plans that have been documented by the critical service providers
- Prepare a report on each service provider reviewed which includes an evaluation and recommendations for improvement, where applicable
A thorough evaluation of your service providers will assure you that you are using the best ones available and that they have the same concerns regarding business resiliency that you do. In the event of an emergency that affects your business process or theirs, you will be confident that your service providers will be there for you.
Service Level Agreement Development
In the course of doing business, you quite often require a third party to assist in providing a service that is vital to your overall business process. During times of business as usual activities, they will fulfill their responsibilities as expected and you will be pleased with their service. The problem may arise during an emergency situation when they cannot fulfill their responsibility. Can you afford to be without their service for any period of time? Can you wait to find out what they are capable of in an emergency? A service level agreement can outline what is expected of them during normal and emergency situations.
The Eagle Rock Solution to developing service level agreements:
To successfully develop a service level agreement, you need to:
- Identify the service that you need provided by the third party
- Identify any periods of time that you could survive without the service
- Identify any penalties that should be imposed should they fail to meet your requirements
- Stipulate how often this service level agreement should be reviewed
The development of a detailed service level agreement will provide the peace of mind that your third party providers will be there for you. The quality service that they provide for you will be there even during emergency situations.