It's mid-February 1999, and you have communicated your organization's Year 2000 remediation plans to clients or customers, employees, vendors, shareholders and partners. Hopefully, you also have received information from your suppliers and business partners that they have Y2K readiness plans in place.
Your communications program is far from finished, however.
Your next critical step in preparing for the rollover to Jan. 1, 2000, is to ensure that you have a Y2K contingency plan in place and that you are ready to relay its details to all of these same constituencies. The earlier you have a communications plan ready, the better.
When you begin sharing your contingency plan depends upon when Y2K- inflicted problems might begin hitting your organization.
Gartner Group Inc. has estimated that only eight percent of all Y2K disruptions will take place on Jan. 1. The consulting firm believes that the majority of Y2K-bug errors could strike over the next three years in relatively equal portions.
Fiscal 2000 years, for instance, begin as early as April 1, 1999, in Canada, Japan and New York state. July 1 also could prove a harbinger of the success - or failure - of Y2K remediation.
That's when applications that employ six-month windows in processes will begin to perform calculations using post-1999 dates.
A communications contingency plan establishes clear chains of command and control for Y2K emergencies and institutes procedures for monitoring critical parts of the operations before and after Jan. 1.
Reed Elsevier Inc., the parent company of LEXIS-NEXIS, has developed a "CEO road map" to govern Y2K contingency plans.
The road map helps the CEO of each business unit understand the potential breaking points, rank their priority and decide which problems can be delegated and which ones need to be handled by the CEO.
Reed Elsevier also is forming hub-and-spoke command centers staffed around-the-clock by technical, operations and business personnel to help diagnose and prioritize simultaneous Y2K problems.
Our communications plan calls for updating our customers, employees and business partners proactively with pertinent elements of the contingency plan.
We want customers, especially, to feel confident and comfortable about our level of preparation.
The communications plan - which may serve as a valuable prototype for your organization - covers:
- How we are prepared for contingencies involving both our services and those of suppliers outside our control, such as telecommunications and utility firms.
- How we plan to help customers do business with us in the event of localized or regional breaks in services.
- What messages need to be prepared for customers, employees and business partners and how they will be relayed in the event that some communications networks are down for either hours, days or weeks.
We will use all available vehicles to get the word out to customers - Web sites, direct mail, customer newsletters and public forums such as trade shows.
We are designing our contingency plans to include measurement of customer response so we can tell if our messages are getting through, and we are developing mechanisms to respond to inquiries about our contingency plans.
And just as you should, we are preparing programs to communicate our contingency plans to employees. It is critical that all employees know their expected roles in the event of an emergency and that they make plans to be available if they are needed.
In short, 1998 was the year of remediation; 1999 is the year of contingency planning. While most problems are expected to be brief glitches, preparation for anything more is essential.
Editor's Note: Angela Rickey is Vice President, NEXISr Year 2000 Program, at LEXIS-NEXIS. She can be reached at (937) 865-6800 or via email at [email protected]. LEXIS-NEXIS leads the information industry with the largest one-stop, dial-up electronic research service for legal, business and government professionals. Its customers perform more than 400,000 searches daily across 8,700 databases containing 2 billion documents.
Fast Facts on the Millennium Hype
Readying for the Year 2000 is costing companies millions, but there are also businesses banking on the millennium bringing in bucks:
Market Exposure Inc., Washington. D.C., reports that to date, more than 78 "official" slogans have been trademarked by brand marketers who hope the millennium is a cash cow.
The U.S. Patent Office has received more than 2,000 applications for millennial-related slogans.
What has already been okayed?
"M&M's, the Official Candy of the New Millennium" and "Korbel Champagne, the Official Champagne of the New Millennium."
FYI: Korbel, according to MEI, is planning on spending $25 million to plug its product as the official champagne as we round the corner into the next century. (Market Exposure Inc., 202/232-2348)