BCP Nightmare

I was standing outside the K-Mart at Castle Towers at 6:55 am last Sunday. It was their first day to open after the Christmas and Boxing Day holiday. It also meant that it was the first day of their post-Christmas sale. Like most stores, there were advertisements online and they had distributed pamphlets several days before Christmas showing which items would be on sale.

I was just after a small non-stick Tefal pan. The flyer said Tefal pans would be 50% off!

I thought that I wouldn't be able to wake up before 7 because I had slept past 2 am that morning determined to get the collation of chapters for a book Mother is working on. When I went to bed, I told myself -- if the pan is for me, the pan is for me.

At 6:30am, MyGirl was pushing against me although she was still asleep. It was nice and cool, and frankly, I needed the extra shut-eye. But MyGirl just kept on pushing so I took that to mean I was supposed to get up. (Go for the Tefal pan. Go for the Tefal pan.)

I dressed up and headed for K-Mart on foot. Castle Towers is a 15 to 20 minute walk from Northern Views. When I got there, there were about twenty or so people scattered by the entrance of K-Mart. A few minutes after 7am, two ladies came out and an announcement was made, "We're sorry for the inconvenience but we are unable to let you inside yet. We are having problems with the power and it is affecting our cash registers."

There was immediate feedback of murmurs, groans and objections from the crowd. One fellow asked if they could let people inside even if the cash registers weren't up yet. All he wanted to do was pick up the item he had come early for and according to him, he didn't mind waiting for an hour at the cash register. His main point was that in 15 minutes, there could be an additional hundred people waiting outside with him.

Unfortunately, the sales lady said that they could not do that because it was their policy not to allow shoppers within the premises if they were not equipped to process the sale. She also mentioned that there was a security issue involved.

As the minutes passed, I overheard conversations being exchanged. Each with their own different opinions about the situation at hand. Someone said, "Of course they can't really let people in, especially if they aren't able to secure the cash in the registers." Another person said, "The lady is just doing her job. He should understand that and give her a break." One lady said, "Well if the power is out then their security alarms might not be working so naturally they can't let people come in."

The K-mart ladies came out again at about 7:15am to repeat their message to the increasing number of shoppers. In spite the announcement and explanation, there was a repeated request to be let in from one of the gentlemen in the crowd who had just arrived. Naturally, the man who had spoken up earlier harped that he had asked that fifteen minutes ago.

I couldn't help but feel bad for these two ladies. Yes, they were only doing their jobs and surely they were doing their best. I am certain that the last thing they had hoped for when they went to work at 6:30 am this morning was to find that they would not be able to power up.

I could somehow relate to them. First it was MM2, then it was OPICS, then Oracle BIEE not to mention those PC-based programs. These were the systems I had to work with while at the Bank. Whenever one is directly involved in systems, there is always that risk that something would go wrong.

Business Continuity Planning (BCP) and Disaster Recovery have, in the recent years, become more common terms in the Philippine banking community to provide some sort of preparation for potential problems. I can't be sure if the need for this was highlighted as a result of the feared millennium bug or the inability to access the Makati Business District during the Oakwood mutiny in 2003. All I know is that banks have certainly heightened their awareness over the reality of the risks involved and have dedicated time and resources to mitigate these risks. I am also sure that way back in the early 1990's when the employee union went on strike at the Bank (and we had to sleepover at the Bank), we didn't have a manual telling us what we were supposed to do. We just did it!

I would think that manufacturing and other service- and operations-related businesses have years of experience ahead of banks (in the Philippines) in this field. I wondered whether K-Mart and the like have these kinds of contingency planning and disaster scenarios in their operations manuals. I suppose they do.

However, there is nothing like experiencing the problem first-hand. One thing is for sure, when disaster strikes in real life, it is never as simple and straight-forward as it was during the BCP exercise.

Fortunately for the K-Mart personnel, they were able to resolve their problem and open up the stores before 7:30am and I was able to get a new Tefal pan for the house.