Business Continuity Plan for H1N1 Flu Pandemic

H1N1 News updated on 5 July 2009 : Singapore has confirmed 52 new cases (1004th - 1055th case) of Influenza A (H1N1-2009) today, bringing the total tally to 1055 confirmed cases.

Investigations are on-going for these 52 cases. Of the 69 cases investigated today, there were 50 local cases and 19 imported cases. Of the cumulative number of 1003 cases investigated thus far, 591 were local cases and 412 were imported cases.

Is your business prepared for the global influenza A (H1N1) pandemic? In light of the extensive news coverage given to H1N1 flu pandemic, many companies are concerned about the impact of the flu pandemic on business. Companies should examine what threat does the pandemic influenza presents to their business and ask if they are protected from the impacts of the flu pandemic.

Impacts of the H1N1 Flu Pandemic
Some possible impacts of the H1N1 flu pandemic could be:

• Reduced face to face contact between staff and external parties such as customers, partners and suppliers
• Absence of key members of staff
• Supply chains are disrupted
• Movement or Travel restrictions

Companies should prepare themselves for the global influenza pandemic in order to minimize the impacts mentioned above.

Communications Continuity - Key to Business Continuity
The purpose of business continuity plan is to ensure the company can continue with business as usual during a disruptive event such as flu crisis.

An important factor to maintain business continuity is to ensure a clear and well prepared plan in place for keeping communications going during a disruption.

Unified Communications - a Superior Way of Staying Connected with Employees, Customers and Suppliers
Effective communication with employees, suppliers and customers is critical for survival during a crisis when face to face contact is limited and travel is restricted.

This should go beyond email communication and should include unified communications so that even when in-person meetings are not practical, employees, customer, suppliers and partners can still communicate and collaborate to keep the business going.

Tools that can help companies stay in touch with employees and external parties include audio conferencing, video conferencing, web conferencing and online collaboration.

Companies that have a well prepared plan in place for keeping communications open during a disruptive event will be better able to continue their business as usual than those that don't.

Information Resources for Pandemic Preparedness Strategy
To help crisis planners and companies in their business continuity planning, the Government has published information paper on the preparedness for Influenza Pandemic which can be downloadable from their websites:

1. Preparing For A Human Influenza Pandemic In Singapore - Ministry of Home Affairs
2. Flu Pandemic Business Continuity Guide - SPRING

How Unified Communications Service Provider Can Help
Jupiter Innovations Pte Ltd, a Unified Communications & Collaboration Service Provider, offers rich media collaborative applications for voice, video, data and the web to organizations and companies within and beyond Singapore.

The company's mission is to empower business user a practical and convenience tools to connect, communicate, collaborate and share information over Internet.

The company's solutions range from affordable audio and video conferencing, cost-effective web-based Rich Media Communications, webcasting services, e-learning solutions, voice-over-internet (VOIP) solutions, workflow management and Content Management System (CMS).

Jupiter Innovations is also offering web conferencing (iMeet) solution - an on-demand unified collaborative technologies which converges voice, video, data and web capabilities. iMeet enables teams to work together more efficiently with Online Chat and Web-Conferencing. Geographically dispersed teams can share information among their team on the fly with video, audio and multimedia content.

Because the service is offered using Software as a Service (SaaS) model, it provides many benefits such as fast and easy deployment, no hardware and software infrastructure investment, scalable and easy to manage.

iMeet is especially helpful in the event of a crisis. It helps to ensure that companies can stay connected during the emergency and business can keep going.

Additional information can be found at www.jupinno.com. For enquiries, email enquiry@jupinno.com or contact at
Tel: 6587 4666.