Contingency plan refers to a prepared emergency response plan.
Corporations and entities sometimes get confronted with unexpected outbreaks that could grow to an extent of a disaster. In such cases, they may have seen a leader or CEO of an organization proclaim that he declares the current status as ‘emergency’ and the ‘contingency plan’ is now to be put into effect.
But what exactly is the ‘contingency plan’ referring to?
An effective contingency plan means to implement the prepared protocol for future outbreaks of an emergency. In other words, it’s a plan hypothetically made for events that may be a series of uncontrollable situations, and making a responsive plans for each so that in times of such situations, we can be systematically prepared of the predicted events for example, international wars, serious conflicts, upheavals in the business management environment or unexpected natural disasters.
Iconic events that can describe such situation can be pointed to the economical panic such as 2008 global financial crisis and, 2011 European dept crisis, regional military conflicts, natural disasters like Fukushima nuclear radiation tragedy in 2000s can all be examples. Natural disaster like volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and tsunami’s bring times of crisis more frequently than we think. And now we are witnessing and suffering an epidemic of the Novel Coronavirus, COVID-19, which can be categorized as a crisis that calls for public and private organizations collective response.
Seamless communications are the crux of a contingency plan.
The utmost purpose of a contingency plan is to normalize an organizations operation despite an emergency. A corporation when faced with such circumstances will activate a contingency plan that first protects the company’s resources and minimizes the customer impact by promptly implementing the protocols according to the scenario prepared beforehand that has already been assigned and delegated to the resources for the necessary measures to be carried out.
However, the contingency plan alone can be fragile and often malfunctions due to numerous variables from panic which is why seamless internal and external communications between employees and customers are the crux of a contingency plan. Seamless communications can steer and navigate the situation increasing the probability of a contingency plan to succeed but without it in place it would be extremely difficult to achieve the normalization.
In times of crisis, the value of communications becomes ever greater.
In the past, it was the physical aspects of an investment in preparing for seamless communications. There were investments for server redundancy, back-up power and service redundancy all installed and still having value in the current times. Now we see multiple innovations to support more software applications that ensure redundancy and back-up with such features as standalone survivability, or active-active standby functionality,
However, to procure a complete communications infrastructure for a contingency plan, the above-mentioned hardware and software support are both needed together with the deployment of a unified communications platform.
Generally, a unified communications platform supports multi-technologies and multi-devices. Including Phone calls, e-mail, chatting and more, on the unified communications platform, various technologies are supported to enable emergency back-up that allow you to choose an infrastructure to maximize your communications’ effectiveness through multiple devices like a PC, smart phone or tablet for seamless communication. In addition, in times of a disastrous situation when your office is closed down and you are to work from home or elsewhere, various collaboration tools including voice and video conferencing, group chatting , file sharing, remote monitoring can empower your collaboration with your colleagues for constant discussion for rational decision making. You can experience work efficiency just as if it’s done in the office.
Unified communications shines in times of a crisis. And likewise, the tools provided can smoothly operate a contingency plan which acts as the crux of the emergency response protocol.
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