Session 206: Code BCP: A Real-Life Lesson in Business Continuity Planning

Wednesday, August 5 at 11:30 AM

In 2016, a Fortune 500 health insurance company was given five business days to evacuate a building holding over 1,500 employees. The building was the primary contact center for fifteen states – and it was the beginning of the annual plan enrollment cycle, the health insurance equivalent of Black Friday for retail.

In this case study, Steve McMillan will explain how this emergency arose, seemingly from nowhere; why the existing, tested BCP plan was inadequate in a real moment of truth; how IT used vendor partnerships, community relationships, creative thinking, and thousands of hours in IT staff, from the service desk to the engineer level, to deliver a solution; and how the company met imposed deadlines and did not miss a single contact center call in the process.

This case study will address the importance of:

• Reviewing your business continuity and disaster recovery plans for relevancy – often
• Plan scale and how "loopholes" can spell disaster
• Involving the C-Level in funding the right plans
• Creating a runbook for disaster

Stephen McMillan

Director, IT Networks

Mercury Insurance

Steve McMillan is the Director of IT Network Services for Mercury Insurance, a publicly held casualty insurance company located in multiple states. Steve and his team are focused on the design, build, implementation, and operations of IT systems in disciplines such as network, telephony, contact center technologies, ITAM, and AV Tech. Steve holds a Bachelor of Science in IT, a Master's of Management, and has spoken on IT disciplines such as Knowledge Management and IT Transformation internationally. Steve spends his spare time reading, traveling with his lovely wife Debbie, and is an 8th degree black belt in Jujitsu, teaching self-defense seminars as far away as the UK and Spain.