Coronavirus – Smartdesc Business Continuity
In light of the increasing risk of disruption to the UK due to the Coronavirus outbreak, we wanted to share the key points from our Smartdesc Business Continuity Plan and reassure our customers of our ability to continue operating and providing core services in the face of a pandemic. Smartdesc is a digital-first organisation.
All of our systems are 100% cloud-based, and our data resides within UK and EU data centres. Our UK team is fully agile; they work from multiple locations week in, week out.
Staff have flexible, remote working built into their contracts and have the equipment necessary to do their job from anywhere. This includes Smartdesc offices, client offices and home locations. As such, any barriers to using public transport would not affect their ability to work.
If a customer site visit was required, our staff would travel to the site by private transport; they are all based in London and the South East.
Our Service Desk Team is also equipped with laptops, allowing them to work from home if the main office becomes unavailable.
Our phone and ticketing system is cloud-based and completely flexible. Service Desk agents have softphone applications on their computers and mobile devices, so they can continue taking calls as they do now.
Our call routing is completely configurable to ensure calls are still answered, and Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are met in the same way as now. Finally, our Service Desk ticketing system, and our monitoring and backup systems – used both internally and on our customers’ networks – are fully cloud-based; therefore, we are not reliant on physical travel to access servers to maintain these services. One area outside our control is the supply chain. We have seen instances of hardware orders delayed due to manufacturing issues in Asia.
As the virus is generally receding in China, manufacturers are restarting, but new hardware may be subject to additional 2-3 week delays. We work with a number of distributors who can source stock from Europe and the Americas, so we will always explore alternative avenues if a hardware order is urgent, but lead times may be longer over the next few months.
If you have any questions about any of the above, please get in touch.
