Achilles for Online Applications - Case Study

The Company

A top ten UK marketing and PR agency with specialisation in healthcare, corporate and consumer their opportunity is to become the UK’s leading exponent in social media including the monitoring, analysis of digital media and support of crisis management.

The Business Problem

As an extremely successful and growing company traditionally business had been intellectual-based but with reasonable reliance on technology. The advent of social media, its use in brand advancement, management and protection has raised the reliance on technology systems that support critical business functions. Organisational growth has seen a general increase in the deployment of several technologies across all business functions and as part of a corporate initiative to adopt a business continuity strategy the preparedness of response to the unexpected loss of the technology and IT assets to the business was required. In addition it had also become necessary to establish a credible response to the rising trend in tender processes for proof of business resilience.

The Solution

Building on the foundations of the existing business continuity initiative, Dimension 85 applied the methodology and principles defined in BS 25999, the British standard on business continuity, applying specialised knowledge and experience to provide specific focus on the technology and IT assets of the company. A comprehensive business impact and risk assessment was undertaken which resulted in an extensive report identifying technology-based risk inherent within the current environment, the potential impact of the identified threats and the exposure to business risk currently sustained by the company. The findings enabled a pragmatic yet cost-effective programme of incremental change that address the business requirement through the increased business resilience and general raising of awareness of the company’s personnel on risk-related issues.

The Benefits

The company achieved significant gains in business resilience enabling establishment of the risk level it was prepared to accept and so prioritise resources accordingly to address identified issues. As part of a continual improvement programme they eliminated or reduced other identified threats and applied lessons learned to future purchases. The demonstrable capability of a business continuity and resilience strategy resolved the commercial objections enabling the progression of more business opportunities.