What were the risks faced by Engro after the fire had left its head office in

ruins?

Engro had lost hard copy financial records fro years 2004-2006 and half of
the year 2007. Electronic information stayed intact. Records were needed
to release financial information for stocks and for future projects. The
future projects needed to make sure documents these projects would not
be affected.

Explain the purpose of the Business Continuity (Disaster Recovery) Plan.

What features were omitted from the plan?

As the August 2007 fire at Engro head office had spread very quickly, it
destroyed everything, including all desktop computers and high-
performance servers that contained daily business transaction data. Earlier
in 2005, as part of a risk mitigation effort, the IT department had developed
a DRP to recover from a disaster (see Exhibit 6). In accordance with the DRP
instructions, Mohammed activated the plan on August 20, as the company
senior management realized that all concerned required quick actions.

The primary objective of this Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) is to document

the various recovery steps to be followed in order to resume key IT
operations as quickly as possible, in the following scenarios:

 Disaster at head office (making the location unavailable for use)

 Disaster at Daharki server room / administration building (making the
Daharki (DHK) IT setup unavailable for use)

The plan omitted:

The recovery of business functions / operations other than IT

Circumstances that produce the following results shall indicate a disaster

situation for Engro:

 - Non-availability of MIDAS at Karachi or Daharki for one week

 - Non-availability of MAXIMO at Karachi of Daharki for one week
 - Non-availability of SAP for one week
The systems were not integrated and this made it simpler for Engro to
recover from the disaster: Does this negate the concept of Enterprise
Resource Planning (ERP)? Why, in your opinion, did Engro deviate from
the Business Continuity (Disaster Recovery) Plan? Evaluate the overall
plan and implementation.

ERP stands for enterprise resource planning. With the right enterprise
resource planning software, all your business processes come together for
easy collaboration and rapid decision-making to enhance your team’s
overall productivity. Engro did not have all their information linked to one
central location. Not having all their computers and systems linked helped
them recover data more easily. The use of a cloud server would have saved
them countless hours in manpower and other resources in recovering data
lost in the fire. The plan worked for Engro and when hard copies were lost
in the fire they were able to regain information at other locations from
digital data saved on their computers not destroyed.

What best practices or lessons can you learn from Engro, and how might
you apply those at your organization? Provide specific examples to
support your observations.

I learned that having backup of all documents is very important. Even if

hard copies are lost or destroyed they can be recovered through digital
copies. These digital copies also need to be backed up to a cloud or on
multiple other resources at more then one location. At my organization I
keep all my hard copy records but I have hem uploaded to my computer
and backed up on a cloud server. I learned that a recovery plan is very
important and that if data and information that is important is backed up to
multiple resources you can recover lost information fast.

Ahmed, M. B. (2009). Engro Chemicals Pakistan Limited—Business disaster

overcome. (Ivey Publishing Case No. 909-E24).