December’s ice storm caused major power outages in communities in the north central MA, southern NH and ME areas. This writer’s entire neighborhood was without power for eleven days. Everyone affected has stories to tell, and in all likelihood there will be others before we return to warm weather.

Here’s a valuable business lesson that’s worth passing on: a multi-million dollar client of MFA with offices in southern New Hampshire is a manufacturer of electronic components for the military and telecommunications industries. It has two facilities elsewhere in the country, however the financial and Enterprise Resources Planning (ERP) applications for all operations are maintained in NH.

The loss of power on Dec 12^th essentially shut down the entire company.

First thing Friday morning, the company’s corporate IT Manager took the initiative to purchase a portable generator, gas cans, power cord, and a 220V locking power plug needed to connect the power cord to the generator. By inputting the generated power thru the existing power conditioning - battery backup units, the company was able to restart critical application servers at the corporate headquarters. By midday the entire company returned to normal operations.

As the next several days unfolded, the equipment and supplies the IT manager purchased sold out throughout the three-state area. 220V locking power plugs that retail for $14 were being advertised on Craigslist.com for $75.

The IT manager was the hero of the day. He has realized, however, that the procedure he followed was entirely his own doing. If he had not taken those steps, there would have been significant lag time until operations restarted.

This manager is now making the smart move of documenting a disaster recovery / business continuity (DR/BC) plan for the company’s three operations. Comprehensive, yet easy-to-follow plans will be in place, instructing whoever is available on the required procedures needed to quickly restart operations, minimizing operational losses to the company.

Business life in New England – always an adventure!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 14th, 2009 at 11:58 am and is filed under General Business, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.