Opportunity is Plentiful.
Be Creative * See Opportunity Everywhere * Question Everything * Think Outside the Box
Reduce Risk and Expenses * Empower $ales Team to Increa$e Revenue
I am very excited to share the information in this post with you. I consider projects including those listed below key to my success formula. Focusing on providing ‘beyond the expected’ value has enabled me to: build highly resilient continuity programs, discover surprising value streams, write books, create videos, develop B2B enterprise software and succeed at the national level in athletic endeavors. You can do it too! Much of it is mindset!
I have successfully completed all of the resilience related projects in this post and many more. Each project has helped my organizations become more resilient and often they have produced significant expense reduction and revenue opportunities beyond my core responsibilities. The projects are universal and can be initiated for any type of organization.
I suggest you do not limit your value to these projects. The seeds for many of my projects are a result of the unique holistic view you and I have of organizations when building our programs. We have the privilege of understanding our assets, vulnerabilities, capabilities and risks. Often, we understand assets better than anyone in the organization. As you read about the projects in this postand throughout the Ultimate Business Continuity Website, think about projects that are specific to your industry and organization.
My intention in this post is to provide examples that you may be able to leverage, but also to inspire your thinking beyond core prepare-respond-recover. If you maintain a positive, creative, innovative, think big, open minded attitude – you will provide extraordinary value to your organization in many ways!
Throughout this post a common thread is that data is a top asset for many organizations. Due to our positioning in the organization and as a by-product of our core responsibilities, we can monetize this for our organization and ourselves. Your contribution can be incredibly valuable low-hanging fruit. The results can impact every department in your organization and the payoff can come through many revenue and cost reduction opportunities.
Your Sales Department can use the resilience you build to generate revenue: After you have successfully responding to and recovered from a disruptive event your sales team can use your success to help close sales. Imagine speaking with a prospect that had a nightmare experience with your competitor when important products could not be ordered. Imagine the frustration on their part with the revenue and customer confidence they lost. Imagine how their brand was impacted. This cascade goes many levels downstream. A savvy B2B salesperson could ‘mine the news’ for these unfortunate businesses stories and hopefully have them become customers of your highly resilient company.
Get Ready to Prospect!
I suggest every day you ask yourself:
- How can the data I am collecting provide new benefits to my customers or internal departments?
- Can I increase value if I dig a little deeper into the data?
- What golden nuggets are hidden below the surface?
- How can I create new value if I ‘mash up’ the data I collect with other internal or external data streams available throughout my organization? Sometimes the sum is greater than the parts!
- o Can mashing data streams provide new value that can be used as a competitive advantage?
- o Can mashing data streams be used to perhaps create a new product or service? I know of commercial products that are built on creatively using public data for spectacular results!
Before we review specific projects, here are some general project tips, techniques and tricks that have helped me succeed on many occasions both in my career and my personal life. Additional examples are abundant throughout the book.
Tip – Do not get overwhelmed. I know at a first glance some of these projects may seem imposing and may take time and effort. For example, the book you are reading has been one of the most challenging projects of my career. There was a lot of information I wanted to share with you and I had limited time beyond my day job to create it. I systematically completed my ambitious book project using the advice I suggest in this post and throughout the Ultimate Business Continuity site. You will find a way and in the end, you will complete all of the projects you attempt.
Tip – Understand what you want to accomplish. It helps to think of the outcome (deliverable’s) and to work backwards. I learned to work backwards when I was a software developer and it has served me well in all walks of life.
Tip – Develop a written project plan. It does not have to be fancy. You can use a spreadsheet or project planning software. There are excellent commercial and free systems available.
Tip – Be organized, focused and respectful of start and end dates. Understand your resources. Set a realistic completion of goals and reward yourself along the way.
Tip – BREAK THE PROJECT INTO SMALL STEPS (TASKS). Every big project is a series of small steps. Listing the small steps is a key to your success.
Tip – BE CONSISTENT. If you complete a few tasks every day it really adds up over a month or year. That is how I wrote 10 books, developed resilience programs and succeeded in every other large project I have attempted.
Tip – Each project is a journey, enjoy it.
Tip – If you hit a wall find a way around it, over it or under it – never let it stop you!
Tip – Be creative and think outside the box
Tip – Never give up AND Never say ‘I can’t’! I live every day of my life by those credos.
Finding low hanging fruit: Perhaps, you have already gathered some or all the data for the projects described in this post during your BIA or when building your plans. Perhaps, the data exists in full or part in a ‘gold copy’ database somewhere in your organization. Sometimes data is gathered and just sits there collecting dust. You may be able to leverage that data in it’s current format or by looking at it from a slightly different slant. Often that uncovers surprising new value.
I believe information is best served being stored and accessed from a centralized ‘gold copy’. You need that one source of ‘truth’ as opposed to 10 conflicting databases or 50 silo’ed spreadsheets. If the data is modified in one place it should be reflected throughout your organization. Imagine how many data errors and how much manual effort that would eliminate! That will translate into cost reduction and revenue. I have experienced it.
Building high hanging fruit is worth the effort: If the data that makes up the projects does not exist you will have to compile it from the ground up. There are many ways to do this such as through interviews and surveys. Depending on the size of your organization it can be simple or complex to create. In some cases, it is cost effective to bring in an admin or an intern to assist you in collecting and inputting large data sets.
If you love to explore, research and solve puzzles, you will really enjoy these projects. It is time to start prospecting for golden nuggets…
$ – Toll free phone number identification project: I discuss this project in detail in another post, ‘Spinning Data into Gold’. Identifying and building resilience for customer facing critical toll free phone numbers is essential. Customers are your lifeblood. You must be available to them. During a disruptive event, you still must communicate with them.
But wait there is more! While you are doing your data prospecting you just may happen upon tens or hundreds or even thousands of toll free phone numbers your company is still paying for that are no longer being used. I promise you it happens. There is an industry built on auditing telephone bills and tracking organizational phone numbers. I have savings in the six and seven figure range by cleaning up mistakes. You can do this analysis in-house. Please read the ‘Spinning Data into Gold’ post for details on my strategy.
$ – Laptop / Tablet recovery project: I discuss this project in detail in the post entitled, ‘Reduce Expenses and Improve Resilience with The Laptop Re-use Project’ This project has produced increased resilience and significant savings for my clients. The potential savings for a large company of mid 6 figures to low 7 figures is possible. In some cases, I could initiate the project with a few phone calls and some coordination with IT. Management loves this project. I can’t blame them. It is a win-win project- increased resilience and cost reduction.
$ – Generator project: loss of power is one of those ‘fairly common’ types of disruptive events. A generator can keep the lights on until power is restored. Commercial generators can be used for office locations or personal generators can be used to keep the lights on for critical employee’s homes.
During the aftermath of a blizzard we drove a personal generator to one of our IT executives who lived off-the-beaten path. We installed it and he worked through the rest of the blizzard. Mission accomplished. Had we not planned we would not have been able to purchase a personal generator, as they were all sold out during and after the storm. He was thrilled and we earned brownie points.
The effort to gather the data needed for this project can be a standalone project or as part of a comprehensive location capability data gathering effort.
Gather a list of all your locations and the facilities managers. You can get this information from the facilities or real estate department. You then send an email to the facilities people asking if they have a generator, what section(s) of the facility it covers, how long the generator can run and the last time it was tested. If you will store the data in a centralized database, provide them with a link. They can then open a simple form and populate the database. When they complete the form it can trigger an alert or run a report on the current results so you can follow-up where more information is required.
The results can then be mapped to your BIA impact results to understand risk. You can then present your findings to management and discuss remediation. Perhaps you will purchase the first generator for a location that has none or add additional generators to cover an entire building rather than only part of it.
Tip – The generator assessment can be part of an overall automated process that sends update reminders to the facility managers. Include a link in the message so the managers can review the current location data in your system and make modifications. After they click the ‘reviewed button’ trigger an algorithm that analyzes the new data against the requirements for the location. This is truly understanding risk and capabilities in real-time.
$ – Supply Chain Project: Many companies rely on just-in-time inventory and complex supply chains. If the supply chain breaks and suppliers are not available it can have a devastating impact on a company’s ability to do business. LuLu Lemon and Toyota are just two of hundreds of companies that have experienced the pain and embarrassment of a broken supply chain.
Hopefully your purchasing department has this information but if not it is a great exercise. I suggest you map the supply chain end-to-end. Identify critical suppliers. Identify single points of failure. Identify Tier 1, 2 and 3 suppliers. Does each node in the chain have a tested business continuity plan? Has your company reviewed their plan?
If you are using a great BCM system mapping the supply chain can become a much easier effort than trying to do it manually. Also, gaps can be identified in real-time as data changes (see the automating assessments post for an example of the real-time process). In addition, my favorite BCM systems can visually display the supply chain.
Tip – You have the most leverage on insuring a supplier creates a business continuity plan and implements redundancy when contracting with a new supplier or when renewing their contract depends on them having a tested plan.
$ – Vendor project: your company may have a great deal of vendors you work with to procure supplies and equipment. Perhaps vendors can be mapped to locations or regions. Some may be national vendors that service your entire company. Whether the vendor provides snow removal, copy machines, pallets, boxes, commercial vehicles… if they are not available it can severely impact your business.
Hopefully vendor information was collected during your BIA or possibly your purchasing or accounting department maintains an up-to-date master database of all of your vendors. Otherwise, it can be a valuable exercise to initiate a thorough analysis of all of your vendors. Identify critical vendors. Identify single points of failure. Identify alternate vendors. Do each of your primary and alternate vendors have tested business continuity plans?
You may discover that you are using different vendors for the same product or service in many different locations. Perhaps that can be consolidated to contracting with one vendor for all of your locations. This can result in significant volume savings and simplification. If you do consolidate to one vendor do be sure to have backup contingencies in case that vendor does not deliver.
Tip – You have the most leverage on a vendor that they create a business continuity plan and implement redundancy when contracting with the vendor or when renewing their contract.
$ – Systems gap analysis project: In mid or large organizations, this can be a complex project that is talked about but sometimes just never gets completed. Although the analysis may be time consuming, it is critical that your organization understands your upstream and downstream system vulnerabilities and capabilities.
During this exercise map all of your internal and cloud systems end-to-end. Understand all dependencies. Is there a Tier 2 system sitting between two highly critical Tier 1 systems? Is there an ftp data file needed to drive those Tier 1 systems? Are you getting that ftp file from an outside vendor? Do the vendors have a good backup plan? Can they meet their systems level agreement (SLA)? Have they experienced ‘down time’ that could impact your ability to service your customers?
This project can also identify redundant systems that may present opportunities for consolidation, simplification and cost savings. It will also identify systems that do not meet the required business RTO and RPO. I have even seen this project result in tremendous savings where dedicated servers were migrated to virtual servers, running multiple systems on the same server. Consolidation of servers can reduce costs for hardware, software, electricity and data center space requirements. I have seen saving in the 6 and 7 figures. Another feather in your cap!
Warning Tip – Just because a system is in the cloud, does not mean it is resilient. There are many horror stories of cloud systems being unavailable and businesses stopping. I have read about companies where people ‘go to lunch’ when a critical cloud system is unavailable. This could cause loss of clients and revenue. Audit your cloud provider to be certain they have a robust plan in place should they be hacked or hit with a Distributed Denial of Service attack. I have witnessed cloud providers being down for an unacceptably long period of time. That becomes a huge business continuity issue. If you insure cloud providers a resilient you are providing way above and beyond value to your organization.
$ – Employee skills and certifications project: There can be significant value in doing a comprehensive analysis of employee skills and certifications throughout your organization. HR might have some of the skills and certification information but there may be room for improvement. Speaking with them to learn what information they have collected would be a good starting point.
The value of understanding the skills and certifications of employees can be critical during disruptive events. For instance, if employees in a certain region are not available, you may have the required skill-set to keep the business going in a different region of your organization. This project also has incredible value from a safety aspect. You will understand who is trained in CPR, as an RN… Clients I have advised have found surprising value in many parts of their organization. You never know what skills people have until you ask.
Work with HR and approach this project with care. Sometimes this exercise is performed prior to an upcoming merger or acquisition. People can rightfully become concerned. So, communicate honestly the reasons for building a skill and certification repository.
$ – Shipping project – I have completed this project on two occasions and it reduced expenses significantly in both instances. Once I completed this project for a catalog company and the other time for a manufacturing company. In both cases the subject of shipping costs arose while doing the BIA dependency analysis for the shipping process.
The process owners were complaining about the high cost of shipping by UPS and FedEx to customers. They provided me with some data which listed shipping costs by weight, distance and size of the packages. Each company was being billed more than $20,000 per month. I have a friend that owns a company that built complex algorithms and a highly-automated process to analyze shipping expenses and significantly reduce expenses.
The shipping process owners I was working with submitted a very short form consisting of one month’s billing to me and I ran it through my friend’s website. In each case the cost savings were well over six figures on an annualized basis. The best part is there was no expense to my clients for the service. My friend’s company works on a fee from the percentage of savings.
$ – Always Always Always seek opportunities to improve data quality, streamline the flow of data vertically and horizontally through your organization and break down those awful department silo’s:
You will have the unique privilege of seeing how data moves vertically (within departments) and horizontally (across departments, suppliers and customers) from end-to-end. Amazingly you may be the only person in that position. Often IT departments are too busy working on new systems and maintaining current systems to examine the end-to-end flow of data. Unfortunately, data inefficiencies and errors can be very expensive to your organization. Suggesting improvements can be a goldmine to you and your career.
As you work with department managers and their employees watch how data is input into systems. You will learn a great deal. Map where the data comes from (upstream) and goes to (downstream). Ask managers about issues they are having with data they receive. It is an important question, as what often happens is a data error is made a step or a few steps upstream and the cost to the organization is not felt until it is used downstream. For example, imagine your company receives a supply of widgets and the person doing data entry makes an error in the number of widgets received. Perhaps inputting 1,000 instead of 100. If a mistake is not caught immediately it might incorrectly seem you have enough supplies when in truth you will fall short, which could be costly in many ways including brand image, loss of customers and wasted time and money fixing the errors.
Do not laugh, I encountered this type of data input error years ago, when a colleague ordered 1,000 custom portfolio’s for our team to give out at BC Offsite Meetings instead of ordering 100. Let’s just say we never had to re-order portfolios.
Tip – Many data errors can be corrected on the front end – when data is being collected and input into systems. If systems are not designed with proper data validation controls at all upstream data entry points, then downstream processes and ultimately revenue will suffer. You will have a continuous data cleanup black hole.
Tip – Business managers must take ownership of data quality.
Tip – When selecting tools or developing your own database systems use field validation on input fields whenever possible. A few examples that are simple, highly effective yet are often overlooked include:
- Required fields such as employee ID must be entered or the record cannot be saved
- Formatted (masked fields) such as telephone numbers should only accept numbers and can only be a certain length
- Date fields should have a consistent and defined structure
- End dates cannot be earlier than start dates
- Pick-lists and lookup fields should be used whenever possible, otherwise information will not be normalized and the system can quickly become an expensive to cleanup mess.
As you watch the data entry process being performed and ask questions you will find many possible low hanging fruit improvements.
Also, please read the post ‘Database or Spreadsheet’ for much more information on database design best practices.
If you have any questions on these projects, please contact me.
