UK businesses complacent about communications disaster planning     A newly-published poll taken shortly after a serious fire in a BT hub in Manchester last March shows that businesses are generally complacent about communications disaster planning. The findings illustrate the uphill battle the UK faces to alert companies to the need to plan for the unexpected in relation to similar and other types of incidents such as terrorist disruption.   The fire brought 130,000 phone lines down, half of which still hadn’t been restored several days later and left some without a service five days later.     According to the survey:   86 percent of firms affected found the fire was disruptive and it had an impact on voice communications in 60 percent of those polled. E-mail, fax or Internet operations were also affected in 38 percent of companies hit by the fire. Just 34 percent had a disaster recovery or business continuity plan in place though 75 percent admitted they would lose sales calls, 18 percent losing upwards of 100 enquiries per day in such a situation. Those polled showed low awareness of solutions, nor did most appreciate the need for business continuity planning. 71 percent saw little value in automatic call diverts in emergency situations and 70 percent of those polled were unaware that banks expect businesses applying for loans to have a proven disaster recovery plan in place.     The survey was conducted by Direct Response, a specialist in voice, data and contact centre services. Chris Robinson, managing director of Direct Response said, “Our experience of disruption of this type is that companies fail to have in place even the most basic solutions. A disaster recovery plan does not need to be complicated, nor do its elements need to be expensive. Often, just getting a business’s phones to automatically divert to a location scripted to manage them can make a huge difference, as can making sure the firm backs up data to a remote location.”       1043 firms were interviewed between 29th April and 14th May 2004.

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