Uplanit provides business continuity IT disaster recover consulting for large private and public companies, including hotels, power companies, investment companies, casinos, and others. Using paper-based scripts, creates disaster scenarios, runs the scenarios for clients and records how prepared companies and their employees are for the disaster scenario. Often these exercises are a regulatory and audit requirement for Uplanit’s clients.
Uplanit was using a paper-based exercise planning system to help its customers improve their business continuity and disaster planning. Uplanit consultants would go onsite to an enterprise client, and utilize paper “scripts” to present and run an emergency scenario for an enterprise client’s employee base and capture those employees’ feedback.
As the company worked with more and more corporate clients, the paper process became cumbersome and inflexible. Creating the scripts for the scenaries was very time consuming, passing out forms and collecting feedback on paper was inefficient, and reporting on results was taking weeks.
The company wanted to upgrade to a modern system that would reduce costs, improve flexibility, and give the scenarios a greater sense of reality by using technologies such as direct messaging. Although the Company wanted an enterprise-grade platform that would scale with the business, it is currently a small company with limited resources, no sizable in-house IT staff, and no background in web-based development.
“We recognized right away that Alpha Anywhere was the only product that could do what we wanted with the resources we had, and in the shortest time possible,” said Steve Power, principal consultant for Uplanit. “The no-code and low-code approach was ideal for us. The people on our staff who were going to be the developers were also the knowledge experts, so no business analysts were required to translate the requirements. This is a big plus for Alpha Anywhere.”
Using Alpha Anywhere, Power built much of the web-based system himself. Participants see the scenario unfolding on the Alpha Anywhere web app, and have to react to developments in real-time. Videos delivered via the web app give the exercises a greater sense of reality. People can participate from many different locations by accessing the app via mobile devices and the web. There is also far more interactivity than when paper is used.
The app also makes it easy to rate how well companies did during the exercises, because participants can respond to online questionnaires via their phone or tablets. All this makes it easier and faster for Uplanit to report results to clients. Uplanit was able to launch the system far faster and at far less cost than if it used other app development methods.
“Using Alpha Anywhere, we’ve brought disaster exercises and scenarios into the modern era,” Power says. “It’s helped us reduce costs, please our clients and expand our market share and customer base — and happier customers are loyal customers.”
More case studies on how companies are driving business processes with Alpha Anywhere.
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