Supply chain – Finding the weakest link

I was speaking to a group of Thames Valley business people just a month ago at Jon Davey’s “1000 ways”.

A question from the floor asked “How resilient are you?” I was confident that the business was safe from serious disruption. How wrong can one be? On Friday 21^st February our hosted service provider for website and email suffered a serious failure of their mail server. Many of their customers like me, had no access to email from breakfast time until nearly midnight. Services were eventually returned with all email intact, although unavailability service meant our being late in responding to our customers and potential damage to our service levels.

As a former computer engineer and business continuity specialist, I am by now, well aware that our supplier’s IT disaster recovery procedures are either outdated or non-existent. There are currently technologies available to either return normal services immediately or within a very short while. Customer’s applications are paramount for any reputable managed services provider.

What have I learned? I have lost confidence in our supplier and have already begun engagement with their replacement. I should have clarified the supplier’s service levels at the outset and examined their capability for resilience. I must regularly assess my supplier’s ability to service my contractual requirements. Although our hosting supplier is not one of my friends in the Thames Valley, they will very well soon will be. How easy it is to suffer disruption because of matters beyond our control.