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SEPTEMBER 2004
Leveraging business continuity
Business critical processes are just that; critical. While not every process in a company is critical, there are systems and data that have to remain up and running if the business is going to continue. Jay Haller, a Disaster Recovery Specialist for Storagetek says, "Business continuity planning and contingency planning are processes that define exactly how, for which applications and potentially for how long, a business plans to keep functioning after a disruptive event. In the wake of September 11, 2001, when most people think of DR they unfortunately think of catastrophic or cataclysmic events. Disruptive events however, can range from a small hardware failure, to human error, to events similar or potentially even more serious than the events of 9/11/01."
Understanding business continuity can help resellers move commodity sales to greater profitability
Michael Bosworth, author of solution selling, defines three levels of pain with a potential buyer; latent pain, pain, and hope. At first glance, hope (or pain already acknowledged by the customer) seems to be the best situation for a sales rep, however "hope is actually the worst situation. Hope, in this case indicates that the customer is already on the road to a solution, and competition is out there already creating a sale. Latent pain is unacknowledged pain - the perfect place for a knowledgeable consultant to begin creating hope. Jay Haller's comment in the opening paragraph contains a key point here - most disruptive events lie in the form of latent pain, or what he calls small hardware failures. The question is, "how can we move this pain into the center of our buyer's attention to create a solution with profit?' Business continuity is likely already high on the customer's agenda - tying it to the products and services you provide is the next step to earning a customer's loyalty.
1. Terms that create high-involvement
Understanding the language of business continuity can provide the platform for educating clients on the relevant risks and the importance of planning ahead. With this foundation and the knowledge that most companies do not have security or business continuity built into their infrastructure, presales consultants have what they need to create value in the mind of the customer. First, a quick review of what causes downtime (note that disaster is only 5%):
- 40% Operation error
- 40% Hardware error
- 12% Application failure
- 5% disaster
- 3% other/environmental
In today's mission critical processes, most companies rely heavily on computer infrastructure . Understanding the core elements of business continuity will help a consultant identify and secure high risk elements from failure. It has been said many times, "the computer will fail, its just a matter of when." Following are some of the terms consultants must understand in driving this message forward:
- RTO (Restore time objective) - or how much down time can your client stand in any given process. An understanding of the client's most important processes often reveals that there are a handful of systems that cannot be down for more than a few minutes (if at all), before clients are lost, penalties are imposed, or the company's reputation is affected. This is clearly a business issue that should be discussed with the owners of data; often the decision makers.
- RPO (Restore point objective) - is another critical issue often left unaddressed. Most managers are thinking about what it takes to get a system back up an running, but how much data can the company stand to lose? "Restore point" refers to the point in time data is restored to. If a backup is made at night and the system crashes the following evening, there may be almost 24 hours of data lost, even though the RTO may have been achieved.
- Information security - a term commonly associated with hacking. But Information security also deals with integrity and availability of systems and data. The statistics above reveal that data integrity and availability are often compromised through operator errors and hardware/software failures. Almost every computer system requires some level of security (confidentiality, integrity, or availability) beyond what it currently has.
- Business impact analysis - is used to assess the financial and operational impacts imposed by an unplanned outage of business units or functions. This is a proactive step in identifying the critical business processes and gaining an understanding of how a given loss would impact the company.
Moving the conversation from technical discovery to business impact is an important step in transitioning the conversation from an influencer discussion to a decision maker discussion. So how do you get the attention of decision makers?
2. Creating anxiety questions
Anxiety questions are questions that raise the eyes of the customer. It may be the question that causes the influencer to introduce you to the management team, or it may be the point that causes the decision maker to recognize that their IT department has not thought of everything.
Most of your clients have probably thought about business continuity. The anxiety question is the wake up call letting them know that the system your are talking about can be affected by operator error, hardware failure, or the growing number of security incidents involving malware (worms, trojans, viruses, etc.).
An anxienty question often sounds like this; I see that you have already purchased a system to do this, how are you protecting it from...? By calling into question the current plan, you create an opportunity to demonstrate how vulnerable a given system is. As a consultant, with insight into security and business continuity issues, you have an opportunity to create value in the mind of the customer. But the window of opportunity is short; the sales person must be ready to discuss the issues in a way that demonstrates wisdom. The average product sales person will not be able to do this, and that is what creates an opportunity for differentiation.
3. Applications in today's market
Traditional recovery in the DR world refers to the use of off-site storage for tape backups, with a procedure to retrieve and restore tapes in the event of a failure. With the growth of regulatory issues, data volumes, and the dependency on data systems such as email, companies need to understand which processes are critical to the business, how to measure business impact of downtime and data loss, and where liabilities might exist.
Traditionally larger companies have invested in BCP and DR planning, however there is a growing need for smaller businesses to be considering at least the threats with greater likelihood. This include operational errors, system failures, and increasingly malicious attacks through email and website downloads. Building a value proposition using RPO and RTO concepts, data integrity, and liability make sense and can get a well spoken consultant time in front of decision makers.
In order to take advantage of this opportunity, resellers would be wise to require every sales person to become educated in the the area of business continuity.
4. Where to go from here
Here are some steps to begin the process:
- Sales people must become consultants - their primary job consisting of helping clients reduce risk, increase operational efficiency, and grow profitability. Make sure your sales people can demonstrate this through role plays in your upcoming sales meetings.
- Learn the language of today's decision makers; the language of business continuity. The trusted advisor will be the one who can educate them on the risks involved with certain technology choices and your ability to help them simplify the risk mitigation effort.
- Specialize in industries where you can learn what processes are critical. Become a resource by learning what issues matter, how they are being addresses, and where failures are occurring. Armed with this information you can become a key source of important information.
- Create tools that assess risk. This might be a one day offering dealing with storage and primary business systems, perimeter security, or Sarbanes Oxley compliance.
- Learn how the technologies your are working with can be secured. Become the expert on locking down systems, patching, backup and recovery, and the interdependencies that may exist between a client's systems.
Stelzl Visionary Learning Concepts is constantly working on new ways to uncover these issues and bring value to the customer. Let us know if you need help in applying these principles.
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