Statement on COVID-19

Esri UK & Ireland continue to closely monitor the latest situation regarding COVID-19 to ensure we can respond appropriately and update our working practices in accordance with the latest expert advice. The health and wellbeing of Esri UK & Ireland staff, customers and partners remains our primary concern and we will continue to be guided by the latest information from the World Health Organization (WHO), British and Irish Governments.

We will communicate with our customers on a regular basis and our primary objective is to work together to help your organisation run as effectively as possible, with minimal disruption, during these unprecedented times.
 

In line with the current government advice to work from home, all Esri UK & Ireland offices remain closed. We are reviewing this position on a regular basis, but our staff have the resources and tools to undertake their jobs securely from home, so we are asking them to continue to work remotely. Our telephone, email and online communication channels are unaffected, so please continue to get in touch in the usual way.
 

Supporting our customers remains a key priority and the Services groups within our business continue to operate:

• Professional Services - Aside from a small group of customers where onsite work is the only option, we are currently adopting a 'remote-first' approach for our Professional Services engagements. We have suite of collaboration tools including video conferencing, online chat and desktop sharing, and we will use these to ensure our customers remained involved throughout the entire project lifecycle. We are proactively contacting our customers to discuss these arrangements and will ensure that the high-quality support and service levels that people have come to expect are retained.
  
  
• Learning Services - For the remainder of 2020 our scheduled training courses will be delivered virtually. Virtual training is fully live and interactive and can be accessed at a location of the customer’s choosing rather than in a shared classroom.
  
  
• Technical Support - Our Technical Support team continues to operate as normal, with access available via all the usual channels. We are fully committed to supporting all our customers and have policies and procedures in place to ensure the continuity of our support services. Wherever possible, we would ask that customers submit requests via MyEsri to allow us to validate details and respond most efficiently.

For the remainder of 2020 we do not plan to run any of our usual customer events. Instead we will use virtual conferencing facilities to allow us to continue to deliver webinars, technical updates and other online events. For more information please refer to the Esri UK & Ireland website.
 

We do not foresee any impact to the delivery of our online services due to COVID-19. Our cloud services are designed with a high degree of resilience and geographic fail-over capabilities to reduce the likelihood of significant impact. Our systems are automatically monitored with alerts for performance and reliability and we have a dedicated operations team ready to respond. We maintain policies and procedures for responding to emergencies, including a disaster recovery plan. For ArcGIS Online, this is described in more detail at trust.arcgis.com.
 

Esri UK and Esri Ireland maintain a detailed Business Continuity Plan (BCP) which is designed to help minimise the disruption to our business and our customers in the event of a major incident such as Coronavirus. This plan provides guidelines on how to respond to such events and, to the greatest extent possible, maintain a high-quality service for our customers. The BCP is tested and updated on a regular basis and along with our ISO27001 and Cyber Essentials Plus certifications all contribute to having robust plans in place to deal with events that might impact our business.

For more information, please refer to our BCP Executive Summary.

We are confident that our business continuity plans both protect our people and reduce the level of service interruption to our clients and business operations. If required, they also allow for efficient and reliable recovery efforts.
 

Esri’s Disaster Response Program assists with global disasters offering GIS technology and expertise to support response and relief efforts. We are already providing support to public health agencies and other key organisations, helping them with their response to COVID-19. If this is of interest to your organisation then please click on this link to find out more.