[Image © Copyright Albert Bridge and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons License)

It’s clear that those who use BlackBerry® smartphones and BlackBerry® PlayBook tablets like to get things done. As RIM CEO Thorsten Heins shared during the BlackBerry World™ 2012 keynote, “BlackBerry is about saving time, and it’s about success.” We’re people who like to think ahead and enjoy feeling prepared – whether it’s with the right information heading into a meeting or, as I’m discussing today, being ready for the unexpected.

Fire departments, regional police, and community programs have long proposed the idea of having an emergency plan for your family and home. In business, we have the concept of business continuity to stay cool and collected in the face of any number of unfortunate incidents. Your BlackBerry smartphone – and a ton of fantastic apps – can help accomplish these goals both at home and at work. Let’s take a look at how you can stay prepared for emergencies.

Connectivity

I once had a member of government speak to me on Twitter® about how he was able to use his BlackBerry device to coordinate emergency efforts during mass flooding. There are countless other examples of this, such as right here in Ontario when the city of Thunder Bay declared a state of emergency – BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™) and social networks were used to help coordinate and help those without food, water, or shelter. The connectivity of BlackBerry smartphones helps to keep you in touch with those who matter — not just when you’re having fun, but also when things go sideways and having a connection is critical.

Plans and Checklists

Planning ahead is the real key to being prepared for emergencies. Since you carry your smartphone with you most places that you go, what better place to contain that plan for quick reference? You can work through the many guides and templates to create your own emergency plan and then store it for access via Documents To Go® or Adobe® PDF Reader, or you can leverage the many emergency-focused apps available in the BlackBerry App World™ storefront. For example:

• Federal Emergency Management Agency app
• Business Emergency Checklist
• In Case of Emergency (ICE) Emergency Medical Info and Contacts
• Emergency Information (by AppsForBB.com)
• Emergency Information (by Vimukti Technologies Pvt Ltd)

Business Continuity

Business continuity helps your organization ensure that critical functions can continue in the face of disasters, emergencies, or unexpected shifts due to uncontrollable circumstances. If your organization hasn’t yet considered implementing a plan for this, don’t delay any further. The Business Continuity Institute states in their 2012 Q2 magazine that in a survey of industrial industries, “only 53% of respondents were confident that they could recover quickly in the event of a disaster.” (2012 Acronis Disaster Recovery Index)

Mobility should be a key aspect of this type of planning, as rapid and secure communication is critical to successful execution. If you have a business continuity plan, it shouldn’t be in a binder in the bottom drawer, but accessible from wherever you are. The plan can be stored on your intranet, as local documents on your BlackBerry smartphone or BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, or can even manifest as a custom app deployed by your business.

Many business continuity plans contain emergency contacts that need to be immediately notified of the situation. Consider labeling these in your BlackBerry smartphone’s address book, or even creating a BBM group for mass communication even in the event of your mail server kicking the bucket.

Protect your infrastructure

Lastly, it’s important that your technology, and the investments that you’ve put into it, stays in secure working order. Backing up data off-site is one of many best practices for ensuring the integrity of your digital assets. BlackBerry Technical Support Services can also help if you’re an enterprise using BlackBerry Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions. This can include relationship-based support with regular visits by a technical resource.

I’ve only discussed the tip of the iceberg here in terms of how you can stay prepared for emergencies both at home and at work. What are your ideas? How does your smartphone factor into your plan to face the unexpected?

For entrepreneurs who start a new business, one of the keys to success is finding the right channel for selling products. For Windy Dana, who designs, manufactures and sells her own jewelry in Indonesia, that channel is BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™).

“In Jakarta, BlackBerry® smartphones are a ‘vital’ communications tool,” said Dana, the founder and owner of the popular blogstore, Antyk Butyk. “When I contact people in Indonesia, they always ask me for my BlackBerry PIN rather than for my phone number or email address. Everyone here uses BBM.”

Dana moved back to Indonesia from Australia, where she got a bachelor’s degree in computer science and a master’s degree in multimedia studies, and she quickly learned that road traffic in Jakarta was so busy and slow that it made selling jewelry in person difficult. So, she started marketing her jewelry through BBM, using the app’s Groups feature.

BBM is an easy-to-use, chat-style app that makes free-flowing conversations between multiple users—up to 30 per group—easy and fast in near real-time. In addition, it allows users to send pictures, broadcast messages and record voice notes, making it easy for Dana to share her designs and products with her BBM Groups within seconds.

“What’s great about BBM Groups is that everyone in the group can see the information in real-time and answer questions, so the group becomes a self-running community where other members help eachother out by answering questions and sharing information, which makes my job much easier.”

For Dana, BBM isn’t just a communications tool – it’s also a valuable business and operational tool. Dana uses her BlackBerry smartphone and BBM as the centerpieces of her business, using them for client and internal communication, marketing, lead generation and even customer service.

“BBM helps me to understand what my customers want, which I can see either by following the group discussions in BBM or by communicating directly with them for customer service.”
BBM is also very cost-effective for Dana’s business, since it uses very little data. She relies almost exclusively on her data plan and makes almost no use of voicemail, which makes her communications bills predictable and keeps them low.

This comes in especially handy when Dana organizes sales events, also known as “bazaars”, to showcase and sell her jewelry. She uses her BlackBerry smartphone to capture high-quality photos and videos and shares them with customers in a matter of seconds, attaching them to invitations to attend her bazaars.

And since BBM allows group members to sync their calendars with each other and send calendar invitations, Dana can keep her group members up to date and remind them of upcoming bazaars.
With the help of BBM and the BBM Group functionality, Dana has grown her Antyk Butyk business, and now employs five employees in total. Her employees help her with the production and delivery of the jewelry but Dana remains the one who sells and markets the products.

“I still design the jewelry myself and my staff helps me to make the quantity that our customers request. Marketing and communication with customers is still handled only by me.”

Dana’s business now is thriving and she is very thankful that BBM provides her with the tools she needs to run her business. She concluded: “Without BBM, I might already be out of business.”

Do you use BBM for business? Share in the comments below.