Building resilience in the provision of critical national infrastructure with ISO 22301

David Clarke
Telefónica UK

At Telefónica UK we are proud to be one of the first UK businesses to achieve the international ISO 22301 accreditation for business continuity management. We’ve always worked hard to ensure that all parts of our business are robust. Our business continuity provisions were accredited under the former British standard BS 25999, so the transition to ISO 22301 was a natural one for us.

Our COO and business continuity champion on the Board, Derek McManus, summed it up nicely when he said: “Achieving ISO 22301 accreditation demonstrates our commitment to providing a reliable, high quality service to our customers. It shows that we have the resources, investment and processes in place to protect ourselves from potential service disruption – minimising the impact on our customers.”

The acid test

Last year, in the run up to the Olympic Games, we got an opportunity that most businesses don’t – the chance to put our business continuity plans to the test.

We undertook a number of activities, and one of the most high profile involved asking 2,500 of our employees to work away from our Slough Head Office for one day. The goal was to try out our technology, our network and the way we work – for real, on a working day.

I’m glad to say that we passed the test. Everyone was able to do their normal work – with no impact on our customers.

The ISO 22301 accreditation and the results of our flexible working day both demonstrate that we really do understand business readiness and continuity, and that our customers can rely on us when the unexpected occurs.

David will be discussing this and the issue of standards within the 'Supply Chain Continuity' stream at the BCM World Conference on Thursday 7th November, starting at 13:05.