Time is money, particularly when a crisis occurs. Whether it's a disrupted supply chain, halted plant production, or a critical IT system failure, the faster the right people and information come together, the quicker the resolution.There is a market opportunity to tailor communication solutions to respond to business crises. Specifically, a Business Crisis Communication Service would take a web conferencing platform and add the processes, services, people, and features specific to a crisis situation.
When a crisis occurs today, a lot of time is wasted getting people together. Typically, 15+ minutes are spent paging, calling, texting, and/or emailing people to join an audio conference bridge. Once on the audio bridge, more time is wasted announcing who is on, what the issue is, its impact, its status, and available options. Even more time is wasted if the right people are not on the call or if participants do not have access to critical information or systems.
In an ideal world, the right people come together in under a minute on a web conferencing bridge that shows who is on, summarizes the issue, and allows individuals and/or groups to share information with one another. While good web collaboration software platforms exist, there is a lot of communication and coordination that needs to occur prior, during, and after an event. A business service offering would include:
* Processes--Defined prior to the event What--Type of event - Category, Criticality, Scope Who--People - Roles, Groups, Privileges/Authority How--Contact info and steps to follow per event type When--Time of day and day of week rules
* Service--When event occurs Notification--Automatically contact & connect people across multiple channels Web Conferencing--Web, video, audio, and chat collaboration Moderator--Makes sure all the right people are on, follow process, escalations, authorization, and address any service issues that may come up - A crisis process expert Security--Controlled & logged access to information/systems by 3rd parties
* Advanced Features--Optional additional services Recording--For post mortems and continuous improvements Location--Physical location of people/devices - GPS Translation--Translating one language to another - Speech rec. to text real-time Pictures/Video--From cell phone, adding pictures on the conference Transcoding--Web conf support for Smart Phones - Blackberries, iPhone, ... Reporting--Monthly reports detailing usage, opportunities, effectiveness Survey--Post conference survey for continuous improvement Security--Authorization, Authentication, Privacy, Federation, Encryption Updates--Send updates via SMS, email, voice mail on change of status
If this service were sold as a SaaS model, a business would not have to invest in a lot of technology, it will work with outside organizations/people, and the time to deploy is minimal.
