The impressive release of the Apple Watch on Tuesday has really typified the rise of investment in smart-wearables. As James McQuivey, an Analyst at Forrester has suggested, Apple has finally managed to bridge the gap between personal wearables and smart technology. This is suggestive of a more integrated future between our smart devices, allowing information to be exchanged freely.

We are all familiar with the challenge of trying to work on a tight budget. This is more difficult on the service desk where the customer must be treated with the same level of customer service regardless of the budget for the team. The key question for all IT managers must be: How to scale their customer support without expanding their service desk team?

There is a yawning gulf between perception and reality when it comes to managing a crisis.

Make sure you can bridge the divide without complicated formulae. The tail end of hurricane Gonzalo swept the extremities of the country earlier this month. It proved to be somewhat of a damp squib in most areas with London being caught out. One woman was killed by a falling tree. But overall the country was prepared. Regular updates from the BBC and the Met Office kept us in the know; Flights at the major airports were rescheduled or cancelled, fishing boats, ships and ferries either stayed far out at sea or remained in harbour and the structural damage was kept to a minimum. Thank you Michael Fish.

A recently published report looking into the effect of social media on breaking news has some findings that should be of concern to all those who share responsibility for the reputation of their organisation.

Last week the Financial Conduct Authority made an announcement that should be of great concern to business continuity managers everywhere, but especially those working in customer facing financial services. The announcement was that the FCA were issuing a fine of £42 million to the Royal Bank of Scotland, NatWest Bank and Ulster Bank for IT failures which occurred in June 2012 and meant that the banks’ customers could not access banking services.

The actual cause of the IT incident was a software compatibility problem that impacted upon over 6.5 million customers in the UK for several weeks. Over the course of that period customers could not use online banking facilities to access their accounts or obtain accurate account balances from ATMs, were unable to make mortgage payments and were left without cash abroad. The banks applied incorrect credit and debit interest to customers’ accounts and produced inaccurate bank statements, and some organisations were unable to meet their payroll commitments or finalise their audited accounts.

The Business Continuity Institute has just published the results of its 2014 survey into Supply Chain Resilience. The survey, which is the latest in an annual series, generated 525 responses from 71 different countries. A couple of key findings from the survey caught my eye.

The first was that 81 per cent of respondents reported at least one instance of supply chain disruption last year. The second was that loss of productivity, experienced by 59 per cent of respondents, remains the top consequence of supply chain disruptions, followed by increased cost of working (48 per cent) and loss of revenue (45 per cent). So the vast majority of businesses will suffer at least one incident of supply chain disruption a year and they are all likely to impact on your productivity, costs of working and revenue streams. In other words, they will all hit your bottom line.