Before there were automobiles, people traveled only a few miles from their homes – because travel by horse, or on foot, was slow. For centuries, that limited horizon satisfied most people’s needs. With the advent of the bicycle, followed by the internal combustion engine, individuals could travel further and faster than ever imagined. The transition from horse and foot travel to horsepower was not swift, nor without incident (high auto accident rates prompted many cities and towns limited speeds – or ban them).
The same occurred in communications: from word-of-mouth to smoke signals & semaphore, to mail services, the telegraph, telephone, and mobile phones to today’s ‘smart’ phones and instant messaging.
Change is often slow, sometimes painful, and never free of cost (monetarily, culturally or sociologically).
The Business Continuity Management industry has slowly accepted automation of communication. There are many automated tools available, yet many organizations continue to cling to BCM’s old standby – the Call Tree.
It wasn’t that long ago (unless you were born after 1980) that hard-wired phones were the ultimate communication devices. If you wanted to be prepared to contact employees and vendors after a disruption or disaster, you compiled a list of their work and home phone numbers. Department managers circulated a list for all their employees to write down their up-to-date phone numbers, and printed a copy for emergency use. It took time to maintain (as both people and phone numbers changed frequently) and often languished. Human Resources might have had the same information stored in their database, but there was no simple way to extract the information (if HR would allow it).
Today, a surprising number of organizations still use manually-maintained Call Trees – despite the proliferation of relatively inexpensive automated notification system (ANS) tools in the marketplace. What holds them back?
- Cost
If you calculate the number of man-hours required to keep dozens (perhaps hundreds) of Call Trees up-to-date the cost of maintaining Call Trees can be staggering. By comparison, because some ANS systems run on a usage basis automated systems free up man-hours and cost very little.
- Budget constraints
There’s no reason BCM must ‘own’ the ANS system. Once in place, the system can be leveraged by IT (for a variety of situations), HR (for snow days, company-wide announcements, etc.), Facilities Management (for building and security issues) and Executive Management (for location, line of business, departmental and other announcements). Cost-sharing, on a usage or percentage basis, can overcome BCM budget constraints.
- Resistance to change (it’s always worked, why change?)
Have you ever run an all-employee Call Tree test (especially during non-business hours)? What an ANS tool can accomplish in minutes (with automatic reporting!) a Call Tree may take hours to complete (if it can be completed at all).
If yours is more than a small business and doesn’t currently use an Automated Notification System, you should give it serious consideration. When your business is disrupted, time is critical. Manual Call Trees may get the job done – slowly and with dubious accuracy. That’s an unnecessary risk you should avoid. Consider parking that buggy in the garage and step into the 21st century. It’s not a step your BCM program (and your entire organization) will regret.
