August 18, 2004—A new survey has found that the number one factor that influences an organizations choice of business continuity provider is the location of their recovery center.
Provider SunGard Availability Services questioned more than 200 UK businesses, from FTSE 500s to SMEs, to identify what they look for when selecting a business continuity partner.
Overall figures show that for 36% of respondents the location of recovery centers is their primary consideration when making the outsourcing decision. This is followed by a third citing a supplier’s ability to provide reliable technical support.
The third most important factor is the level of trust between the customer’s business continuity team and its supplier, with 12% of respondents choosing this factor as the reason they would select one provider over another.
FTSE 500 companies bucked the overall trend by pushing ‘trust’ down to sixth on their list, rating instead ‘ease of working’ as their third priority. The complexity of both IT systems and the business continuity solutions that support them means that for larger sized businesses it is essential that their in-house and outsourced teams can work together effectively.
For SMEs, however, trust is their second priority, with location remaining number one and technical support pushed into third place. Compared to their fellow respondents, SMEs have fewer in-house resources, which makes them more dependent on their business continuity supplier, thus making their ability to trust that organization a key concern for them.
Not surprisingly, ‘value for money’ was ranked fourth.
Overall, respondents considered the ability to innovate the least important with no organization citing this as something that would concern them when choosing their business continuity partner.
SunGard MD Keith Tilley said: “It doesn’t surprise me that respondents were most concerned about the distance factor. As organizations are so dependent on electronic information to do business, it’s imperative that they can quickly recover that data and also get their people to a recovery center to use it.”
He added: “What does surprise me is that respondents don’t believe an outsourcer’s ability to innovate is important to them. Without innovation you cannot expect your business continuity supplier to deliver excellent technical support – something that was ranked second in this survey.”
—Elliott Chase
Reprinted with permission; copyright 2004 i-FM
