How does a business become more resilient?
It can be a very tricky one.
Do I build my business infrastructure like a Formula 1 car?
Insanely fast, very safe because nowadays when a formula 1 car crashes, the track on which it is racing is built in such a way that the track has the capability of dealing with most crashes by creating zones that slow the car (wreckage) down, and the car itself is built in such a way that an impact gets absorbed by all the bits that simply shatter and disperse the energy away from the safety cage in which the driver sits.
During the race a driver has the support of a lighting fast pit stop team, capable of replacing parts and components of the car at an instant (looking at you Redbull racing, #GoMax ;).
Not to mention the team of top notch engineers (Aston Martin) who have spent the months leading up to the Grand Prix season working on getting as prepared as possible.
The moral of the story above is: that if you have the budget, you can still go incredibly fast and safely around the track, things become problematic though when the F1 car needs to drive anywhere else other then on a specially designed purpose built race track.
You simply cannot build a superfast car, capable of doing these speeds on all terrains or in any given environments.
So how do I become more resilient? How do I make my business more resilient without it costing the earth?
Without loosing any flexibility. Without loosing the ability to go with my business flow?
Regardless of what you do as a business and before we even start about security and the evil hackers, surveillance and the crypto-mining ransomware, my guess is, that you and your business are very dependent on your internet connection.
Being disconnected from the web will bring most businesses to a stand still pretty quickly.
Becoming resilient is about looking at your business in a (w)holistic manner.
This starts with a good, stable and secure internet connection, the internet is quite literally the first thing that comes through your (business) door/wall.
The vast majority of customers do not come through your door any more, they come through that cable.
How resilient is your ISP? Does your ISP represent a security threat and as such a threat to the continuity of your business?
Lets not get into political terms but in practical terms, at least not in this post..
You will most likely be using the devices supplied by your ISP such as modems and routers. Most ISP’s do not give you a choice in the matter, if you want their support. This means you need to trust your ISP to supply you with good quality, secure devices. SME’s are heavily dependent on these devices as they often lack the budget and or know-how to do this themselves.
For corporates an ISP can pose a security threat of a different kind, when working on corporate level, you will be dealing with “the Big Boys”. Which is great because everything is bigger, better sometimes even faster but what the Big Boys are not, is flexible. Last minute changes they often struggle to deal with. In the same way that you will never see an oil tanker do a hand brake turn or a Sumo wrestler do a back flip.
In order to create more resilience SME’s should consider their local ISP’s as opposed to the big brands (not government initiatives at a local level) but an actual local company. Your local ISP is most likely in the business because they care (at times even driven to start the business out of shear frustration with the horrible service provided by the big brands). They may be a little more expensive than the big brands but you will probably find an overall better service provided. This in turn will make your business more resilient because you will be able to focus more time on your core business rather than being on hold to a call center or talking to a chat-bot.
Openfactory often finds itself as “the Small Guy” when corporate customers are on a project with the Big Boys, picking up the pieces when rather than bigger, better, faster, agility is required to deal with here and now problems of a project that has been in the planning for a significant amount of time. We enjoy being in that space.
The moral of the story is; your connection to the internet/the world/people/customers is very important, no matter the size of your business make sure your ISP is somebody you can talk to.