In recent times, New Zealand businesses have been impacted by several significant natural disasters – earthquakes, flooding and fire to name the obvious culprits. The Covid-19 global pandemic is the latest threat facing organisations, and business continuity planning is being analysed in meeting rooms and boardrooms across the country.
Covid-19 will really affect how companies operate with reduced headcount due to illness or self-isolation, staff in quarantine and parents taking leave due to school closures all potential considerations.
Offsite operations
To mitigate this risk businesses are turning to technology solutions and hoping to minimise interruptions, reduce person to person interaction and facilitate off-site productivity. The most obvious solutions are:
Video conferencing replacing travel: With travel being restricted by either regulation or company policy, face to face meetings are being replaced by video conferencing.
Staff working from home: Our news feeds are full of businesses testing their pandemic response by having their staff work from home for a day.
In most cases, turning to technology can provide business continuity and maintain productivity, however it does introduce new challenges. It’s one thing to consider a home-based workforce, it’s another thing to rely on their business tools to operate in the event of a power outage or interruption.
A power failure response strategy will ensure that communication tools continue to operate whatever the circumstances and is a vital consideration equipment in home offices that until now have never been considered as business critical. Many will have overlooked their staff’s home network connection in their pandemic response plan.
So how do you provide the same level of power protection in staff homes as you would in the office?
Simple solutions
There is a simple solution. Eaton and APC by Schneider Electric are world leaders in small UPS equipment, designed to protect home computers, modems, ONT routers and VOIP phones from power outages, surges and interruptions. There are a range of models to choose from based on requirements, they are all easily installed “plug and play” technology and provide battery backup in the event of power outages.
At UPS Power Solutions, we have been reviewing our business continuity planning to ensure we can continue to service our customers whatever the circumstances. We’ve been proactively securing our supply chain since January and are holding good stock of Eaton UPS equipment and CSB batteries with more due to land in the coming weeks.
We have designed our own IT infrastructure to ensure we can continue to operate whatever the disruption and will remain contactable to support our customers 24/7. Our Business Continuity Plan encompasses UPS solutions, alternate power supplies, automatic fail-over systems to a non-affected branch, a DR facility and the ability for our staff to work remotely.
Get protected
Is your business as resilient as it could be?
Will your ‘show go on’ in the face of adversity?
Now is the time to review your critical power requirements and proactively plan to reduce the risk that power outages pose to your operation – even if those operations are being undertaken in quarantine.
For the month of March, we’re working with our partners to promote vital products that perfectly suit the challenges introduced by Covid-19 and deliver you ideal solutions for protecting home based staff from power outages.
Offsite workforce solutions – protect home-based workstations and other electronic equipment
Eaton 3S
Eaton 5E
Unmanned office solutions – protect your business network server, switch and storage device in the office to ensure operation even if your staff are in quarantine.
Eaton 5PX
If you are unsure as to what products will suit your requirements, please give our Sales Engineers a call and they will design a solution for you.