Covid-19 pandemic and Work from Home for Business resiliency

Covid-19 pandemic and Work from Home for Business resiliency Jeewan Rimal [email protected] Introduction Business resiliency is one of the evolving concepts practicing all over the world today. The concept was coined with information system, cyber security and computer based disaster recovery sector and has been tightly aligned with the operation, service delivery and sustainability of almost every modern businesses. The business resiliency concept refers to the continuity and availability of business service and operation as promised without any disruption and outage in acceptable standard. Business resiliency not only protects tangible business assets, safeguarding the people but also maintains branding, trust-worthiness and leverage the future scope of the business. Simply to understand the resiliency concept we can take an example of long route vehicle like care, bus, train, ship etc, they stock extra consumable parts and equipment like tyres, safety equipment, nuts and bolts etc that might be useful to ascertain the goal to reach in destination even in the case of minor problems in between. In worst case they can take the help form other vehicle by shifting and exchanging necessary tools and equipment. The Covid-19 and the business “The quarantines and lockdowns that are needed to fight the virus’s spread are freezing the economy, too, with unprecedented force and speed” https://www.fpri.org/article/2020/03/the-effect-of-covid-19-on-the-u-s-economy/ (Chris Miller), This time, entire world has fear of Covid-19 outbreak and countries are in lock-down. Most of the regular service besides some essential operations has halted. There are already several forecast and reports that have claimed of big economic downing in the future followed by huge problem and change in society, economic structure, financial markets, jobs and development activities. Work from home and the Customer Applications “Work from home” commonly refers the practice where employee perform their assigned job from their own place maybe form home, restaurant, café or park using internet connection and digital device like laptop, mobile, tablet using some application. Employee not required drive for office in rush, people not require attend in unnecessary crowd in stress to make his/her work done. For example a faculty can teach his/her student from home using learning management system( LMS) or Online collaboration system (OCS) or Virtual meetings/Video conferencing. A Bank employee can evaluate and analyze loan appraisal by achieving evidence uploaded by loan party. An administrative employee can write a memo for good purchase and send for approval to higher authority. “Work from home” is also supported by “Customer Applications” also refer as “Self-service Portal” where ultimate user, end user can obtain service, data or application offered by organization easily by using their own device from their own location. Few example of services includes dedicated customer application like mobile top-up, electronic bill payment and financial transfer, service order or request, passport renew request, vehicle registration renew, online shopping etc. which save time, efforts, cost and useless stress and greatly save environment by saving fuel, eliminating carbon emission and other possible health and physical damage. Covid-19 Lock down and Business Resiliency Due to the lock-down most of the business offering non-essential services are halted and essential operation are running on very low capacity. The current covid-19 pandemic and similar other different difficult situations such as technical failure, cyber-attack, natural disaster, civil movement etc evolves threats to the continuity and resiliency of business operation by halting or limiting business activities resulting the service outage, financial loss, reputation loss and bitter customer experience. This time the service sector business both essential and non-essential like (Government Service, Public Service, Education, Bank, Finance and insurance sector, telecommunication, internet and media, Consultancy and Advocacy, many other similar business have been operating for specific (Emergency service only) and manufacturing, Supply chain, construction and development sector are almost shut because of the threats. This phenomenon urge the requirement of business resiliency concept and practice so that business and operation can be operated with low environmental impact, lower cost, safely and achieving higher trust, efficiency and satisfaction using various ICT technologies like cloud computing, virtualization, Customer application, Internet, and customer end devices. Threats to the Business operation Service on Operation Customers Threat and Risk Business Resiliency Service on Operation Customers Threat and Risk Business Resiliency The business resiliency concept and practice get evolve only because of the different risks and associated threat exists in the business. Some the common risk includes natural disaster, pandemic threats including Covid-19, SARS and flu, Economic disruptions, cyber-crime, civil emergencies, technological failure and disruption and terrorist attack etc. Business Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery Business Products and Services Business Resources (Tools, HR, Tech, Application Management Business Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery Business Products and Services Business Resources (Tools, HR, Tech, Application Management Business Resilience Strategy https://www.itgovernance.co.uk/business-resilience In order to ensure the resilience of an organization in the face of these varied risks, it is essential to have a business resilience strategy, which should have four core strands: A business continuity plan which plans and rehearses a response to all identified and likely operational disruptions. ISO recommends ISO22301 standard. A disaster recovery plan which enables the organization to recover from real disasters. A value protection plan which ensures that shareholder value is protected at times of disruption. An exploitation plan which enables the organization to spot, and exploit, commercial opportunities that may present themselves during times of substantial disruption. How business resiliency can be maintained? Before drilling down to the world of business resiliency, we must be clear about its concept and correct our existing assumption that “Information and communication technology (ICT), IT people, Software, Computer System, Cyberspace etc.” are only related and responsible to business resiliency, which is not true. Diagram: 1 : Business resiliency management diagram. Analyze Observe Develop Patch Risk Management BCP DR Security Infrastructure Data People Services Analyze Observe Develop Patch Risk Management BCP DR Security Infrastructure Data People Services Of course, ICT tools and services are important facilitator (medium) to obtain and provide business resiliency but not a complete package. Organization requires deep penetration to the subject, multi-dimensional analysis of service and customer as well as best practices to plan, operate and achieve resiliency. The high level business resiliency management framework shall be as in the figure. Resiliency operation is achieved by managing multiple areas of business like; Resiliency in Application or software. Ensures that the specific application like banking, customer support, e-learning, service request ticket, reservation has resiliency. Resiliency in infrastructure and Information system resources. Server, Virtualization, database, Hardware, Operating system, data and other dependencies. Resiliency in other internal resources like support person, configuration, alternate or backup personnel. Internal staffs, router/Switch/Firewall and other device configuration files, SLA party etc. Resiliency in service delivery channel. Data connectivity, Dependent party or agency service etc. While benchmarking the business resiliency expectation and operation, following element has to be considered in plan and design phase. Services offered by organization (like e-banking, online order, account opening, license form, online learning, loan request etc.), service delivery channels (mobile application, URL, links, websites, Internet, SMS etc.), their availability (Backup link, AMC, SLA), status (Good, medium, low grade) and service dependencies (Internet, electricity, Intranet, Government approver, third party provider, Mediator company etc) Feasibilities of service, scope and limitation of organization, support user, training. Disaster recovery planning, Recovery time and objectives, Backup service and redundancies. Customer, their behavior, status and exceptions. Global trends, best practice, governing standard (local and global). Commitment from the top management and so on so forth. As a nutshell, resiliency can achieve by following the approaches similar as mentioned here. The approaches or strategies might slightly different according to the business types, business services and nature of threats. First : Analyze and study the requirement, define Scope, risk, opportunities of business (internal and customer) and approve from top management - Plan Second: Start the digitization process by implementing software and Information System –Do : Create service providing channel (Mobile Apps, software, Internet) : Provide training, awareness to employee and customer. : Perform internal management work (JD, Schedule, Policies, standard etc) : Prepare and assure DR and BCP for application, channel, HR with necessary meetings and arrangements. Third : Create test plan, schedule and team, perform risk assessment – Check Fourth : Improve if any flaws and implement any implementation approaches. - Acts (This process can repeat for any other improvement and further up-gradation) Service based business and the prospective of business resiliency There is no research has conducted in Nepal to figure out how many service sector and industries can offer “Work from home”. What percentage of work load can be eliminating by using work from home and End user computing. Let’s have a look on some interesting statistics of work from home world-wide 39% fewer people working from their workspace (Office) during Covid-19. Google Survey 88% companies encourage their employees to work from home. Facility Executive data. 99% people would like to work from home in this time (covid-19) Buffer.com 56% Global companies allow to work from remote place Owl Labs, USA The International Facility Management Association (IFMA) stayed in business during Hurricane Harvey because of their robust remote worker program.  Even though they couldn’t access their office building due to flooding, IFMA staff were able to continue operations by accessing company data in the cloud and transferring phone service to home offices. https://fmlink.com/articles/5-ways-remote-working-impacting-business-resilience/ This data and facts indicate that working from home or from remote location assist for the running and resiliency of business operation. In a survey conducted by Airtasker  show that 1,004 full-time employees – 505 of whom were remote employees – throughout the U.S. about their work habits and productivity. This results indicate that remote workers are actually more productive than their office-based counterparts. Other interesting findings of the study are:  Remote employees work an additional 1.4 more days per month than in-office employees, which is nearly 17 additional workdays a year. Remote employees take longer breaks on average than office employees (22 minutes versus 18 minutes, respectively), but they work an additional 10 minutes a day. Office workers are unproductive for an average 37 minutes a day, not including lunch or breaks, whereas remote employees are unproductive for only 27 minutes. 15% of remote workers said their boss distracted them from work, which is less than the 22% of office-based employees who said the same thing. (Peek) Thus, most of the service based business like education, banking, finance and insurances, Media, Internet and Telecom, courts and advocacy sector, government service, public sector service have big potential of digitization and maximize business resiliency by offering Self- service platform and working from home practices. “Work from home”- Surviving the business Achieving true business resiliency integrate business continuity planning (BPC) and disaster recovery (DR), data backup, incident response, team management, technology management etc. Overall goal of the all efforts is to provide non interrupted service maintaining the acceptable level of standard to protect business assets (Data, Cost, trademark, goodwill, and associated people) and increase customer satisfaction through promised service. “Work from Home” and “Self-Service Portal” or “Customer application” are most appropriate method for now in this Covid-19 epidemic context and suitable method to sustain business operations even in other natural calamities, civil abstraction and so on. Working from home in such this time not only keeps your business running by remote operation, engaging your customer and keeping alive to the economy but also protects our life from Covid-19 infection. Apart from this, working from home increase productivity and efficiency, save time and cost, increase customer satisfaction which obviously attract more income to our business and greatly saves our environment by minimizing pollution, carbon emission and maintain our ecological mindfulness as well. Final Verse Business resiliency is the big picture of arrangement; integration and practice to conduct business operation and provide satisfactory level of service to its customer consistently even in the critical time also by safeguarding business resources, assets and relevant people. Critical time refers to the period when business suffers from natural disaster, technical failure, pandemic and other insurgencies. In such difficult time employee or business user should be able to conduct their regular operation and provide service to the customer either by accessing business Information system, software, apps or other infrastructure and ultimate customer should be able to obtain acceptable level of service without any disruption, losses and damage. To achieve business resiliency “Work from home” is one of method to survive business in case of disaster and pandemic situation whereas complete resiliency is depends on other several factors like BCP, DR, Agency ability, Information system infrastructure etc. What we need to learn and understand is “work from home”, not only the chat, email, collaborate and conference but also operating business application from remote location is possible, urgent, more productive, reliable option and economical in long run offering low impact in environment, road traffic and increase customer satisfaction. Computerization of business operation and workflow (Internal and External) is the milestone toward “Work from home”, an option to obtain business resiliency which require suitable ICT infrastructure, application and mobile apps (from customer and internal user) development, as well as strategies alignment and necessary commitments from the top management.