One of the things the global pandemic has shown us during the last 18 months is that no firm is immune to disruptions.
Building an Operationally Resilient business is more crucial than ever but also more complex with increased remote working, customers demanding more and the regulators pushing operational resilience compliance up the agenda.
Before COVID-19, many firms defaulted to managing operational risks in a disconnected and siloed way. The pandemic has made it clear that most operational risks are tightly interconnected, and one operational failing can create a domino effect that could lead to catastrophic consequences.
An integrated Operational Resilience framework empowers your company to consistently and continuously deliver to customer expectations in times of internal or supplier failures or in times of global seismic events.
Businesses that are building compliant operational resilience programmes usually start with fully immersing themselves in service delivery from the customer's perspective. Investing in technology to better process and analyse customer usage patterns and trends helps identify operational vulnerabilities to set and test impact tolerances ensuring uninterrupted service delivery when an internal or external crisis arises.
The need for technological investment is vital in breaking operational disconnections between departments and analysing customer usage patterns.
Historically, technological investments have been more focused on the automation of processes to drive cost savings. While those aims remain important, executive mindsets are shifting drastically to an appreciation of the elevated role technology plays in an organisation’s operational priorities, particularly where the focus is now on economic recovery post lockdown.
This connects to the McKinsey global survey of Executives. Responders acknowledged that COVID-19 accelerated the digital side of their supply chain interactions and they recognised the strategic role that technology plays as a major component of business operations.
In the survey, the top three responses on their strategic posture toward technology were:
- Investing more in technology to create a competitive advantage
- Modernising core technology capabilities to keep up with competitors
- Refocusing the entire business around digital technologies
Organisations are not simply going to emerge from this crisis and return to pre-pandemic normal. The world we’re going back to isn’t the way it once was. Reshaped business models and market structures have changed the way businesses deliver goods and services to their customers.
Instead of just surviving this crisis, companies must evolve their people and systems to rise above the chaos with resilience embedded throughout the business to ensure long-term operational viability.
People and systems are the two most likely factors to help organisations at building resilience operations. FourthLine is currently helping several customers with planning, resourcing and implementing their operational resilience frameworks in line with regulators' expectations.
Next steps:
If you need to build or progress your Operational Resilience capability, please get in touch here to find out how we can help you with your resourcing, planning and implementation.
For further insights on Operational Resilience, go to our Operational Resilience micro-site
