The Eyjafjallajökull volcano first began to erupt in March of this year but it was not until its second, more dramatic eruption in April that we saw the unprecedented move to shut large swathes of European airspace due to the dangerous volcanic ash that it was spewing high into the atmosphere.

Globalisation reliant on air travel

This loss of air travel has certainly highlighted how reliant we are on modern air transport and the degree to which it facilitates the level of globalisation we have come to expect. We have effectively been transported back in time to an age when flying was unknown and the main forms of transport were sea and road.

The halt of UK and European air travel has left thousands of people stuck in limbo, unable to come or go, stranded where the pause button deemed fit. Many businesses and business people have also been affected, unable to get back from holidays or business trips, struggling to import or export much needed goods, and unable to attend important meetings abroad.

Global Implications

The extent of the disruption has not only been felt in the UK and Europe but also worldwide.

Yesterday, Nissan suspended production at two of its factories in Japan due to the fact that it could not get hold of crucial air pressure sensors.

Kenya’s economy faces devastating losses as it “haemorrhag[es] $1.3m a day in lost [flower] shipments to Europe” and “there is no diversionary market [as] flowers and courgettes are not something the average Kenyan buys.”

Fujitsu has temporarily suspended exports of notebook computers to Europe and has been unable to say how long its European stocks will last or how much it stands to lose if the disruption continues.

The UK premiere of Iron Man 2 has been moved to Los Angeles, and many sporting, music, movie and other entertainment events face schedule changes and disruption.

Not to mention of course, the financial impact upon European airlines and tour operaters, with the International Air Transport Association stating that losses in the European airline industry had reached £165m a day.

Business continuity

The complete lack of European flights has certainly reinforced the need for business continuity planning.

Stephen Cross, CEO of Aon Global Risk Consulting, observed that “as economies contract or competition increases, lean manufacturing becomes the name of the game… Such an approach might be highly efficient when things are running smoothly, but in the event of a major disruption event such as this, it can lead to significant delays in key materials and inputs being delivered, or in a worst case scenario to a systemic failure in your supply chain” (Continuity Central).

As the volcanic disruption has highlighted though, it is not only suppy chains and operations that can be affected.  With many business owners, directors, managers and staff stranded, a business also needs to be able to continue in the absence of its people.

Not only that, but as the plight of the airlines emphasizes, a business also needs to have contingency plans in place for times when the very service it provides cannot be delivered.  As Jan Husdal rightly pointed out, “a flight is not something you can produce and stock somewhere. It is produced and instantly consumed at the same time… Without passengers and without flights, no airline can survive.”

Yet, in A Decade of Living Dangerously – The Business Continuity Managment Report (produced only a year ago, in March 2009) The Chartered Management Institute reported that (of the businesses they surveyed and received responses from) only 52% had specific business continuity plans covering their operations and that generally managers within organisations remained complacent about continuity.

Obviously there are some eventualities that are almost impossible to predict and therefore to plan for – the black swans of this world – but that is not to say that we should not be building robustness into our businesses and systems now.

Have you been able to run your business without access to flights?

What would happen if other transport systems were unavailable to you?  Does your business have alternative transport plans in place?

Were you or any of your staff stranded by the flight disruptions?

If you have not experienced any disruption, have you designed your business in such a way that it could continue in your absence, should you ever be stranded in the future?

Can you and your staff access emails, documents and telephone services remotely if you are unable to get to the office?

Although the impact of the volcanic ash disruptions is expected to be relatively low in Europe, (RBS has predicted an impact on GDP in Europe of 0.1%), history warns that we are not necessarily out of the woods yet.  According to the Telegraph, the last time Eyjafjallajökull erupted (in the early 1820s) it blew intermittently for 14 months and on each occassion of its previous eruptions it has been followed within months or a year or so by a major eruption at Katla (a nearby volcano that is known to be more violent).  Presently there are no ground rumblings at Katla and the conditions that have led to the unprecendented closures of air space are rare, but this event has very much highlighted the vital and urgent need for business continuity planning. Without it you risk the future well being of your business.

However, it is important to recognise the scalability issues of paper as a technology: paper can only be in one place at one time so it doesn’t work well across multiple sites; revision control is tricky; and it can be hard to back up – do you have duplicate copies of everything if worst came to the worst?

Even if we cannot remove paper entirely, there are things we can do to consign it to a supporting role rather than the main deal within a business.

Steps to creating a paperless office

1. Analysing your processes

The first idea to grasp is the fact that paper usually relates to a process or processes within your organisation. Understanding this will provide a solid foundation for beginning to deal with the paper as the processes themselves provide the structural foundation for creating a paperless office. By analysing the papers for clues about the activities the paper itself represents and following this paper through the system, you can outline your processes, giving you an accurate view of ‘now’.

2. Revising your processes

The next step is to revise your processes in order to maximise efficiency. This includes:

• Eliminating bottle necks and their resulting backlogs
• Removing unecessary steps within the process(es)
• Assessing crossover and interdependency of processes within the wider organisation to ensure integration
• And, overall, designing as lean a process as possible.

Value stream mapping may be a good tool to use at this stage. The people involved in each process within your organisation will also be a vital source of information and feedback as they are the people on the ground who are involved in the processes day-in, day-out.

3. Integrating paper and technology

Having created a coherent set of lean processes, the next challenge is to reduce the use of paper where possible. This can be done by assessing the processes to find out which parts of them can be automated and then developing an IT and technology solution that has your best practice processes inherently embedded into its system. In other words, the IT and technology solution reflects and is built around your processes, rather than the processes being built around the technology.

4. Sustainable continuous improvement

Once you have found a solution that works for your organisation as a whole and that maximises your efficiency and effectiveness, it is important to maintain the momentum of improvement. Ongoing assessment and revision will ensure that as your organisation grows and develops your processes continue to support the delivery of your organisation’s objectives. New technology is also continually emerging that may provide a solution to paper based systems where a solution did not previously exist. Staying abreast of these developments allows you to continually improve organisational performance and efficiency.

5. Reducing risk

Although it is not always possible to eliminate the use of paper completely, you should not be relying on paper for mission critical functions. However, neither should you be relying on technology without a business continuity plan in place. Whatever system and solution you are using, you should always make sure that fail-safes and redundancies are built into the process(es).

If you would like any advice or support in creating a paperless office for your organisation, please contact me or call me on 02476 100 193 – I would love to help!

The main disadvantage is that it only works for Vodafone; however, it looks likely that other operators will join in by providing their own ‘Femtocells‘ in due course.

In the meantime, alternative solutions are available if you are really ’signal-less’. Mobile signal boosters, otherwise known as cell repeaters, use an ariel (possibly external to your office/house), boost the signal and create an upgraded signal within a certain radius of the transmitter. Signal boosters are also available for vehicles, so if you travel a lot and/or regularly travel to remote locations with poor signals, it could provide you with the extra range you need.