| Q: |
What is OpsPlanner? |
| A: |
OpsPlanner is a powerful software tool that delivers business continuity planning, emergency management notification and tracking services in one easy to use Web-enabled environment. It can be customized to fit any size organization’s needs and continuity planning processes. |
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| Q: |
What are the key components of OpsPlanner? |
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The OpsPlanner includes four modules: Collaboration, Planning, Recovery and Notification. Together, these modules provide comprehensive business continuity planning (BCP) coverage, collaborative assessment, planning management, recovery and notification tools. The software provides a collaborative work environment, plan templates, personalized features, real-time, high-speed notification, tracking, mobilization and crisis management capabilities that can be utilized during planning, disruptions, plan testing or post analysis review. |
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| Q: |
Is OpsPlanner easy to use? |
| A: |
The OpsPlanner user interface is simple and similar to Web-based applications that most businesses already use. |
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| Q: |
How can I access OpsPlanner when I am out of the office? |
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OpsPlanner is 100% Web-based and can be accessed at any location with Internet access. You will need the Internet URL for your application, and then each individual user will need his or her login name and password.
If Internet access is not available, plan users can download and print plans from OpsPlanner and carry them manually from one office location to another Internet access is available in a variety of locations through wireless networking including wireless phone carriers. If your company has plans for an Emergency Operations Center (EOC), they are typically equipped with redundant electricity and Internet access.
Internet access has proven resilient during recent disruptions such as 9/11, 2003 Blackout, Hurricane Isabel, and the subway bombings in London. During times of blackouts, many people continued to access the Internet from different locations using various means.
For the many small to medium sized businesses (SMB) based in the U.S. with data centers that can become negatively impacted during disasters such as blackouts and hurricanes, the providers of applications hosted in state-of-the-art resilient facilities most often keep running.
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| Q: |
How do I use OpsPlanner to assess vulnerabilities? |
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OpsPlanner provides the ability to create surveys to solicit input from different parts of your organization. Teams can collect and analyze data gathered from the surveys in order to create complete, comprehensible and collaborated plans. |
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| Q: |
Can I upload my own documentation into OpsPlanner? |
| A: |
The OpsPlanner documents allow plan contributors to post and exchange all types of documents such as Microsoft Word ® and Excel ® files, facilities maps, photographs, surveys, web reference links, and much more. |
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| Q: |
Can OpsPlanner work if I have people working in different locations? |
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Plan members and contributors across multiple geographic locations can access the plan, collaborate, stay on the same page, and be aware of the status of assigned tasks to get the job done. Collaboration can occur equally well at anytime, during plan development, at the time of an event or during the post analysis stage of an event. |
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| Q: |
How does OpsPlanner enable team-based planning? |
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OpsPlanner allows for the creation of groups that can be used to share documents, exchange information, schedule events, track tasks and issues and ensure that every one is on the same page. Additionally, our plan development tool provides check-in/check-out and version history capabilities to support team-based plan development. OpsPlanner also offers a document repository for surveys and interviews and allows document changes to be tracked. |
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| Q: |
Does OpsPlanner support hierarchies? |
| A: |
Plans can be associated with a location hierarchy, organization hierarchy, and plan types. Reporting will support summarizing information at any level of each hierarchy. |
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| Q: |
Briefly describe the notification process and how it is provided? |
| A: |
High-speed notifications to employees, partners, customers and suppliers can be easily initiated as part of crisis management in the Recovery module.
Behind the scenes, OpsPlanner integrates with notification and telecom service providers to deliver the message and track responses. OpsPlanner has partnered with best-in-class emergency notification service providers such as Envoy WorldWide.
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| Q: |
Does OpsPlanner feature Text to Speech (TTS) notification messaging? |
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Text messages sent during the notification process of an event are easily converted to voice using Text-to-Speech (TTS) message conversion in OpsPlanner. The receiver of the message will hear a clear, precise and detailed voice message of the text that was entered by the sender. There is no limit to the amount of text that may be entered in a message. |
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| Q: |
Can I create multiple plans? |
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You can create and maintain various types of plans as well as access multiple templates already created in OpsPlanner. These templates can be used as is or customized to suit particular needs. Both templates and custom plans can be integrated to a standard your company wishes to use to meet your compliance goals. |
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| Q: |
How does OpsPlanner allow me to import a list of users? |
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OpsPlanner provides an easy-to-use bulk import function to load a number of users, contacts and resources at one time. By example, a Microsoft Excel template may be easily downloaded from OpsPlanner to create a comma delimited file (CSV file). With this file you can add users, contacts and resources and import them all together into OpsPlanner, thus saving data entry time. |
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| Q: |
Do you provide business continuity and resiliency consulting services? |
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Aside from providng complete software and consultation services based on a collaborative approach, we help organizations conduct plan audits, risk assessments, business impact analyses, threat scenarios, strategy development, cost benefit analyses, plan authoring, training, awareness, testing and exercising, and plan improvement etc:
Plan Audit: Begins with a review of your “as is” Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Plans in order to determine the level of completeness, validity, compliance and requirements for revision.
Risk Assessment: With this step we determine potential threats that may cause business disruption along with your organizations vulnerability to these threats.
Business Impact Analysis: Critical business processes are identified and an analysis of the impact is determined.
Threat Scenarios: We assist you in formulating various disaster scenarios that present various levels of risk to your organization. We will identify those threats that have highest likelihood of occurring.
Strategy Development: In this workspace, we formulate potential strategies that specifically address the impact of identified threats and risks.
Cost Benefit Analysis: Here we review, prioritize and select the organizational strategies based on investment, risk tolerance and other factors.
Plan Authoring: This step brings the previous steps together. The BC Plan becomes a reality as the various teams collaborate and plan/sub plan development is completed.
Training: We work with you to design system based table top and live exercises in order to determine what program areas need to be improved and/or updated.
Awareness: Methods are put in place at organizational levels and locations to keep all employees/participants informed and trained.
Testing and Exercising: This step focuses on practicing execution of the varied plans/sub plans, participants’ skills and experience through one of the most important steps of the BC program. These tests/exercises ensure validity and effectiveness of the program as a whole and setup the capability to perform lesson learned.
Plan Improvement: A structured workspace is provided in order to focus on what needs to “be changed” in order to make regularly make the BC program more effective and timely as organizations evolve and grow.
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| Q: |
Do we conduct plan audits? |
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We absolutely will review and conduct a plan audit. Typically this involves your “as is” disaster recovery and business continuity plans to determine the level of completeness, validity, compliance, and requirements needed for revision updates. |
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| Q: |
Do we provide training? |
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We work with you on your training requirements and needs. Typically, we will design system-based table top and live exercises in order to determine which program areas need to be improved and/or updated. |
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| Q: |
What if I already have a plan in place? |
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We'll help you conduct a risk assessment to make sure your current plan is enough to protect your staff, assets and operations in an emergency. And we'll recommend strategies to help you save and get the most out of what you have. |
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| Q: |
How can we assist you in being cost effective and resilient? |
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We can assist you to be cost effective and resilient by working together to create a formal business continuity management program. We can help to develop and manage a BCP within our software for additional savings in business interruption insurance premiums. We also help you avoid significant exposures that would occur in a business interruption audit by addressing legal, regulatory, and customer requirements. |
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