In 2022, the IT industry has shown resilience and the ability to develop even in times of war. A business continuity plan helped companies like GlobalLogic to continue working, gain new clients and increase the number of specialists. The resilience of Ukrainian business was discussed at a meeting at Ukraine Crisis Media Center by speakers from GlobalLogic, Lviv IT Cluster and Lviv City Council.
How to build a Business Continuity Plan
For the tenth month of the full-scale invasion, Ukrainian business has been withstanding the blow. GlobalLogic has learned from experience that a Business Continuity Plan, or BCP, will help to be prepared for different scenarios.
“The Business Continuity Plan covers a range of contingencies and allows us to respond to the problem in a timely and efficient manner,” says Anna Shcherbakova, Vice President and COO of GlobalLogic Ukraine, “The most important thing for any plan, and I will always underline this, is the people who implement it. Our engineers and operators have shown fantastic resilience, continuing to work effectively even from the shelters.”
GlobalLogic identifies the main components of a Business Continuity Plan:
Infrastructure resilience: each infrastructure asset needs to have a backup, and each person who is involved in the BCP process needs to have a so-called backup. Each process should be spelled out until the moment when it breaks down, and what to do in this case.
A simple example: there are diesel generators in every office. If the power is cut off, the diesel rises. If the diesel runs out of fuel – there is a contractor who delivers this fuel.
The speed of restoration of work: in the BCP there is a concept of recovery time-recovery time. As a rule, this is the acceptable number of hours that the customer weather as non-working during an emergency. All SMR processes are aimed at minimizing this recovery time and giving the project/individual the opportunity to work again.
For example, since the beginning of the war, the productivity rate of the company’s engineers was around 97-98%. On October 10, it dropped for a day to 83% and the next day it rose again to the level of 95-96%.
Flexibility and adaptability of processes: the interesting thing about the BCP plan is that it never happens that everything goes according to plan. The main thing is to have a variety of scenarios and to work out, even as secondary, different options for the course of events. For example, while working out scenarios for preparing for war, the company did not believe that a full-scale invasion was possible. But they worked out all the options. Therefore, the first evacuation buses were in Kharkiv on February 24 at 9 am.
“Ukrainian IT specialists are committed to continuing working in Ukraine, this is shown by our research, – says Nestor Shvets, Chief Lawyer of Lviv IT Cluster and Head of the BCP team of Lviv IT Cluster – Engineers want to be as efficient and productive as possible to support our country in the most challenging time.
BCP strategy will be effective for everyone
BCP-strategy works not only for large companies, such a plan will help medium and small businesses, various government agencies, and medical institutions. This is the opinion of Lviv IT Cluster and Lviv City Council:
“We have been working on various plans that provided for the lack of centralized electricity and, as a result, the lack of water in the city. The situation is constantly changing, so we regularly refill fuel reserves, improve the operation of diesel generators and solid fuel boilers to provide the necessary infrastructure, – says Andriy Moskalenko, Deputy Chairman of Lviv City Council, – For the IT sector, basic things such as uninterrupted power supply and connection are important. We hold regular meetings with mobile operators and cluster representatives to provide the city with everything it needs.”