By Ed McMahon, CEO - Epec Engineered Technologies
When we sat down in 2005 to develop our IT infrastructure plan for the company, I was a little unsure of why we spent so much time evaluating every investment in terms of what we would do in case of a disaster. Well this winter, I found out why that was so important. While not technically a disaster, New England had the most snow that we have had in over 20 years (with more to come it appears).
We’ve had 10 days where school was canceled and each time more than 5 inches of snow covered the roads making driving impassible. It was extremely important to keep our employees safe and not have them spend hours commuting 10-20 miles in their car trying to make it into work. Before 2005, these issues would have caused our company to close down. This would mean that we would not be able to serve our customers in the way that they have come to expect.
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Because our team spent so much time developing our disaster recovery plan we were able to operate at 100% capacity even though the snow kept on coming. Some of the things that allowed us to continue operating included:
These are just a few of the things that allowed us to keep operating, along with the fact that because we have multiple locations in the US to provide backup if necessary.
Even though all of us living in New England have had enough of this snow, it’s reassuring to know that even in the worst conditions - our disaster recovery plan succeeded the disaster itself.
When we sat down in 2005 to develop our IT infrastructure plan for the company, I was a little unsure of why we spent so much time evaluating every investment in terms of what we would do in case of a disaster. Well this winter, I found out why that was so important. While not technically a disaster, New England had the most snow that we have had in over 20 years (with more to come it appears).
We’ve had 10 days where school was canceled and each time more than 5 inches of snow covered the roads making driving impassible. It was extremely important to keep our employees safe and not have them spend hours commuting 10-20 miles in their car trying to make it into work. Before 2005, these issues would have caused our company to close down. This would mean that we would not be able to serve our customers in the way that they have come to expect.
Because our team spent so much time developing our disaster recovery plan we were able to operate at 100% capacity even though the snow kept on coming. Some of the things that allowed us to continue operating included:
- Having a cloud based ERP system and the balance of our IT infrastructure located at a secure offsite data center with backup power meant that we didn’t have to worry about our employees being able to get into our system and manage customer’s quotes, put in orders or get other information.
- Our investment in our state of the art VOIP phone system allowed us to transfer our main incoming phone number to our location in Largo, Florida. When the phone was answered in FL it was transferred back to the employee’s cell phone without the caller even knowing. This allowed many of our employees’ to work from home and be very productive.
- 98% of our employees have company laptops enabling them to work remote. With a handful of state of emergencies declared over the past months, employees were able to work from home without the lack of resources.
- Having such a deep relationship with UPS allowed us to work with them very early every day to best understand their plans. Having a 5am call with the Regional Operations people gave us insight as to how to best plan our shipment schedule to meet customer requirements. If we knew that they were going to be pulling their drivers off the road because of unsafe conditions we would make sure that our shipments were picked up well before that.
These are just a few of the things that allowed us to keep operating, along with the fact that because we have multiple locations in the US to provide backup if necessary.
Even though all of us living in New England have had enough of this snow, it’s reassuring to know that even in the worst conditions - our disaster recovery plan succeeded the disaster itself.