BPOs take disaster risk plans seriously; small players wish they could

When the October 2013 earthquake struck, employees in IT Park in Cebu City ran out and gathered in open spaces outside their buildings.

Some waited out the night on the grass.

The site wasn’t just a coincidence.

Several call centers have pre-designated “evacuation areas” where employees are instructed to meet in case of an emergency like a fire or earthquake.

Being prepared for disaster and keeping operations going 24-7 is important especially in the business process outsourcing industry (BPO) which hires about 800,000 workers in the Philippines, and over 50,000 alone in Cebu.

Several BPOs in a panel discussion last week of the Cebu Business Month ICT-BPM conference said they had their “business continuity” and disaster risk and reduction management (DRRM) programs in place .

Representatives of Qualfon, Aegis People Support, ePLDT and Lexmark said that after the earthquake and typhoon Yolanda struck in the last quarter of 2013, they were not affected too badly because their employees were trained to respond.

However, this isn’t the case for small and medium enterprises, who make up over 90 perent of busineses in the country and 70 percent of the workfoce.

For SMEs, disaster preparedness is something “nice to have” but not affordable, said Jonathan de Luzurriaga, who moderated the panel.

He suggested that BPOs and other companies with more resources share their best practices and training.

NOT COMPLACENT

There is no law that requires a business establishment to have a DDRM program, but there should be, said Alvin Santillana, operation chief of the Cebu City Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (DDRMC).

“We really need a law that will provide incentives for businesses to have DDRM programs,” he said.

To be effective, he said, disaster risk and response programs need both the government and people, through active citizens, organizations and business.

Santillana said Cebuanos should not be complacent because “Cebu City was the target” of typhoon Pablo in 2012 and Yolanda in 2013.

He said Oscar Tabada of the state-owned weather bureau Pagasa, in an executive briefing, reminded officials that Cebu City was actually in the original trajectory of both storms, if not for a last-minute shift.

As it turned out, northern Mindanao was directly hit by Pablo and northern Cebu and not the metropolis were devastated by Yolanda.

This was an “eye-opener that we need evacuation plans for all of us”, he said.

Santillana said that in Cebu City, telephone number 166 is still the hotline provided free for PLDT.

It can receive calls for fire, police alarms, requests for paramedics or other emergencies, even requests for uncollected garbage.

FEAR LEVELS

One BPO said the 7.1 magnitude earthquake in October last year didn’t damage their infrastructure, but they needed “to manage fear and anxiety levels” of the staff.

Some firms invited the staff to bring their families to the office building to wait out the tremors. During the typhoon, some had to arrange vehicles to pick up employees at their homes.

Business continuity is “the ability of a business organization to maintain mission critical operation during otherwise disastrous events,” said the main presenter, Nino Valmonte, IP Converge, director of product marketing.

This is different, he pointed out, from disaster recovery, which means a disaster has happened and an organization has to get back on its feet.

Survival of a business enterprise depends on being more conscious that the Philippines is the third “most disaster-prone” country in the world in a 2013 global study, he said.

This considers the Philippines’ location in the Pacific Ring of Fire, the archipelago being visited by 20 typhoons a year and the large population living in poverty.

There are natural disasters (earthquake, typhoons) and man-made ones (sabotage, cyber attacks, civil unrest) but “Most of the time we prepare ourselves for physical disasters,” said Valmonte.
But when your computer network is attacked, that is something few are prepared for.

“Internal disasters” greatly affects a business especially SMEs through hardware failure and other causes of data loss which affected 63% of SMEs.

Based on a study Valmonte said 90% of businesses that lose data are out of business after two years and only 50% are able to get back on track.

Ironically, as many as 25% of companies don’t back up their data and only 13% do an informal back-up, where only employees take the initiative.

CHAMPION

Meanwhile, Dwight David M. Simon, ePLDT Chief Technology Officer, said DRRM “has to be championed by the CEO” or it won’t be taken seriously.

In his firm, he said, plans are detailed, including what routes and cars to take to reach a command center with drills practiced every year.

A DRRM briefing must also be part of orientation of new hires.

The call to action by the panel included an appeal to telcos to have a “sense of urgency” in ensuring connectivity.

One BPO panelist recounted his complaint about a telco’s “fiber cut” or disruption in fiber optic cables that shut down Internet services. He called the telco and was told by the IT staffer, “Sorry, I can attend to that tomorrow. It’s my nephew’s birthday today.”

In his presentation, Valmonte gave several steps for a business continuity strategy.

First, form a team with a project manager. A leader is necessary to constantly update and look into the program.

Second , identify possible emergencies and scenarios.

Third, identify the critical processes that can be affected.

Have preventive actions, identify methods of communication and reporting in the hierarchy.

Establish staff safety measures and identify a contingency location where staff can meet in case of an emergency.

It’s also important to have offsite data storage and system availability. Lastly, continually test and review the plan” said Valmonte.

Other panel members in the discussion were Joslyn Canon, mission officer Qualfon; Nagendra Bisht, associate vice president of Aegis People Support; Darwin John Moises, SNR manager global services operations of Lexmark Share Service Center.

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