A Christmas Business Continuity Tale
No doubt your year has been busy, but spare a thought for Santa Claus Industries; its a not for profit organisation that through no fault of its own finds itself with some unique challenges and a logistics nightmare. Here's a Christmas Tale to tell of Santa Claus Industries' Continuity year.
Consider a complex manufacturing and logistics organisation, based at the North Pole, traditionally very busy around the 25th December.
As you might imagine, planning for this event takes all year - no sooner has Santa Claus sat down on Boxing Day then he's called to deal with all sorts of unplanned events that require attention.
Reputation Risk
This year, it started early. Santa was putting the sleigh in the garage when he was accosted by Mrs Claus.
“What are these reports on the radio about you kissing somebody's Mommy?" she demanded.
“W, w, what? Who?” Santa stammered.
Mrs Claus produced photo after photo purporting to show our hero in various forms of embrace with numerous women under the influence and sometimes mistletoe.
The press had got the story and the media team even had copies of the front pages of Arctic Times showing some of the more salacious images.
Santa was able to explain that there must have been a case of mistaken identity, but Santa's image had still taken a battering at the hands of these imposters. He went straight to his Incident Management Team issued public explanation citing that his popularity at this time of year meant that many getting into the spirit of Christmas went a little too far, often wearing his uniform. This had led to to the misleading photos and following a quick injunction on the press and some work by the copyright lawyers, his reputation was restored.
Santa couldn't afford for people to think he was in anyway naughty.
Weather Disruption
February brought ice storms to the North Pole. Not the couple of inches or so of snow that brings London to a halt, but real arctic stuff.
“Sir, it’s too cold for the employees to work,and quite a few can't get into the workshops" his Elf and Safety Manager told him, “I have instructed the elves to down tools.”
Santa sighed and reached for the Yellow Pages, “Hello, heat engineers? It's just possible you could save my elves…”.
His next call was to Husky Sleds R Us where he organised better transport for the stranded elves.
Despite the interruption, with a bit of overtime, things were soon back on schedule.
Supply Chain
Things carried on uninterrupted until late spring when some terrible things happened.
The scenes tore at Santas heart and soon sleigh flights were arriving to help those affected, everyone knew that it would take time for the area to recover, but the worst was over for the people affected and hope replaced pain.
Santa Industries though was still affected as many of his toys needed parts from the factories that were at a standstill.
BC Elf though had planned for this and he had a contingency plan covering all the critical parts with alternative suppliers.
After a few phone calls and emails supplies started to roll into the workshops and production was restored.
Christmas Lunch
Concern started to rise that Bird Flu might be brought by the wild birds to the Turkey Flocks needed for the Christmas Lunch, and gave rise to some concerns about a possible epidemic.
Santa consulted the WHO website for the latest advice (who had learnt a lot from the experience of 2009/10).
“There’s currently little risk for us, the birds are returning from countries where there has been no recorded H5N1 outbreaks, but to be sure, We’ll make sure there is good monitoring to keep track of things” he told his elves, quietly hoping that he wouldn’t have to employ more wardens when the wild reindeer herds returned.
He'd read that the Blue Tongue virus was spreading north, but he'd keep an eye on that too and lets face it Santa already had problems with one of his sleigh crew having a red nose….
The turkey will be served
Cyber Risk
The summer holidays always presented Santa with problems, bored children with too much time on their hands were always on the lookout to cause mischief. This year Santa's IT partners informed him one morning that his “Naughty or Nice” database had been hacked! The status of all the children had been changed and there was no way they could sort it out.
Fortunately Santa Claus Industries is pretty tech-savvy. He didn't panic and instructed his IT department to delete the data and restore from the back up. As extra insurance, he asked for a full virus check to be undertaken, arranged for the firewall firmware to be updated and instructed all the elves to change their passwords. He also made a note get Santa Claus Industries Cyber Essentials Accredited.
Whilst he remembered he also sent out a note to everyone reminding to change the passwords on their phones, he didn't want some inflammatory stories in the News of the Elves about Prancer and Dancer feeling disgruntled and under appreciated as Rudolph got all the lime light again. Donner and Blitzen had smoothed things over and it was old news now …
The big day was rapidly approaching and there were no further problems to distract Santa. He'd even taken delivery of his new super tech low emissions hybrid Sleigh. He was really looking forward to this years and come the evening of the 24th, the Elves loaded up the sleigh and the reindeer team was harnessed to the new sleigh.
Santa clambered up into the driving seat, picked up the reins with one hand and with mounting excitement turned the sleigh’s ignition with the other. There was a short croak and then nothing. He turned the key again, with the same result.
AArrrghhhh!! What on earth could be wrong!!!
Santa was straight onto Super Sleighs (whose sister company had won the London Bus contract).
They told him that on the long run to the North pole he must have run out of diesel and drained the batteries, but if he topped of the tank and slotted in the back up batteries everything would be just fine. But time was running out …. he'd never make it in time …
BUT... Fortunately, on Mrs Claus’ insistence, the date was the 24th of November and Santa Claus Industries were running their annual exercise to test for problems ahead of the critical day!
Sure, Santa hated having to squeeze into his suit before his annual diet had worked off all the previous year’s mince pies, the Elves got cranky at having to load and unload the sleigh and the reindeer team disliked being taken from their warm stables, but Mrs Claus had seen the benefits of exercising ahead of the "big off”.
The batteries were swapped and charged and the fuel tanks topped off and, come the big day, all the good children received the right presents on time thanks to Santa's business continuity arrangements…
As Santa rested in the days after Christmas he wondered what 2015 would bring. It was sure to be another busy year and maybe it was time to do a little bit more work on Santa Claus Industries Business Continuity Planning. It had certainly proved its worth and had maybe even saved Christmas again!
Perhaps it was time to develop things a bit more he thought. "ISO 22301 and maybe BS 65000 " he muttered to himself.
Happy Christmas and a peaceful New Year to everyone
Adapted and inspired from a piece by Richard White BCM Mgr and sent to employees at Scandia Ltd
And remember you can't plan for every thing ! (opens picture)
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