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From a computer virus to a biological virus outbreak, the events that can paralyze business activities are various and can have many consequences if they are not sufficiently prepared for. The Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is a logistical plan for small and large companies that need to recover and restore their critical functions after an unexpected interruption or disaster.
Regardless of whether the operations of your organization have been significantly impacted, or in the best case, if the impact has not yet been felt, Business Continuity is essential to ensure resilience in a time of crisis. Within BCPs, there is always a special place for technology. It’s an element that is fundamental for preventing a business from freezing, at least not entirely.
According to Gcinfotech, 75% of the businesses that do not have a BCP fail to recover their operations within three years. Companies that have a weak plan, especially those that do not emphasize modernization, are more prone to disappear since they will not only struggle to return to work but will also feel severe income effects. Organizations must ask themselves: is their technological infrastructure prepared to face complications like workloads? In this article, we share how Google Cloud can help organizations (in this case: financial services) to modernize and reinforce their infrastructure to improve their Business Continuity Plan.
What is happening?
Some businesses have ceased their operations while others have experienced peak loads. Financial institutions have so far been successful in becoming more productive while working from home. Many companies in the financial sector have continued their operations throughout the COVID crisis as these businesses fulfill a crucial role in the economy, like granting loans to customers in distress and reinforcing digitalization to boost their own banking operations. Technology plays a crucial role in both the societal responsibilities of financial institutions as well as using this COVID crisis to modernize their operations.
New solutions
Google knows that accessing, managing, and keeping information safe can be complicated and confusing. For Google Cloud, guaranteeing the existence of a plan that allows having a technological infrastructure that always ensures access to data is essential. Therefore Google Cloud, for example, offers the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) Lending AI Solution. This end-to-end solution helps lenders launch a PPP loan process quickly, at scale, and at no cost.
The solution contains three components. One is a Loan Processing Portal, which is a web-based application such as the interface between client and institution. The second is a Document AI PPP Parser that enables the use of AI to obtain structured information from customers. Lastly, Loan Analytics facilitates services for institutions to quickly onboard data and perform de-identification.
With this new solution, Google is helping the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) to accelerate and automate processing loan applications and other funds faster to people who need them. This tool contains Google’s security capabilities which enable lenders to meet policy requirements and protect critical assets.
Modern technology
Google has recently acquired Cornerstone Technology whose technologies facilitate the migration of data stored on the mainframe to the cloud. By offering the services necessary for mainframe customers to modernize their infrastructure and applications, these technologies help shape their future in the cloud.
The service offered by Google provides three pillars. The first is to develop a migration path in which Google evaluates the customer’s mainframe environment to move towards a modern service architecture. The second entails converting any language and database into another language or database to adapt applications to new contexts. The third is to automate and facilitate the migration to Google Cloud and drive new innovative use cases in data analysis and storage.
The challenges during this crisis are becoming opportunities to demonstrate reliability to protect the information and to emphasize technology infrastructure. Google is always innovating and adapting to any situation. With the PPP Lending AI Solution and together with Comerstone Technology, Google is trying to mitigate the effects of the COVID crisis. We cannot be prepared for everything, but we can be prepared for similar situations, depending on our business and context. Besides, although the disasters are most unexpected, there are always similar scenarios that we have already been able to evaluate, so we will not start from scratch.