In recent years, it’s become clear that the question is no longer whether a disruption will occur, but when. The modern threats companies face are vast, constant and complex. Operational resilience is a strategy companies implement to be proactive and ensure their businesses can anticipate, withstand and adapt to unavoidable risks.
Implementing thought-out disaster recovery methods and business continuity plans is a necessity. You don’t have to build your growth and longevity strategy on your own. Trusted partners at CGI are here to help.
What is operational resilience?
Operational resilience is best defined as an organization’s overall ability to prepare for, prevent and handle disruptions to continue delivering critical business operations and services. This strategy goes well beyond traditional business continuity plans, focusing on proactive measures rather than reactive measures.
5 key pillars of operational resilience:
- Risk management and identification
- Business continuity and crisis planning
- Incident response and disaster recovery
- Regular resting and scenario trials
- Adaptive work culture
How is operational resilience different from organizational resilience?
While the two concepts are often discussed in business continuity circles and risk management meetings, operational and organizational resilience refer to distinct aspects of how a company handles disruptions. Both require stakeholder engagement, strong leadership and long-term, multifaceted investment.
Operational resilience describes the immediate methods and plans for recovery, focusing on the business’s ability to maintain expected services and functions during and after a crisis. It focuses on specific services and systems, identifying vulnerabilities and developing strategies to support their recovery.
Organizational resilience is broader, encompassing a company’s willingness to adapt and thrive in the face of change or uncertainty. Building this kind of resilient workplace culture requires different approaches, such as investing in innovation, prioritizing collaboration and developing comprehensive, end-to-end risk management plans.
Why should businesses focus on operational resilience?
In a “post-pandemic” world, it is easier than ever to understand the need for disaster recovery plans and operational resilience. Successfully implementing resilience into your organization ensures minimal damage during disruptions, lowers the likelihood of possible penalties and violations and gives you a competitive edge. Ensuring operations remain business-as-usual will also maintain loyalty and trust between your company and customers.
Can technology be leveraged to increase operational resilience?
Not only can you leverage technology when building resilience, but it’s essential. Having the right technology in place can protect your company during disruption, whether it’s a widespread power outage or a supply chain resilience issue.
In those moments, outdated infrastructure and communication methods are unreliable. Implementing modern technology can help you respond to a crisis quickly and efficiently for a swift recovery.
Ways technology helps create a culture of operational resilience:
- Automation: Streamlines repetitive tasks and reduces human errors to accelerate processes in specific low-level areas
- Risk management platforms: Provide a single, unified view of operations to help leadership map exposure, assess impacted branches and prioritize responses
- Artificial intelligence (AI): Predicts potential disruptions before they occur and automates responses
- Business continuity and disaster recovery software: Ensures the availability of critical data during and after a disaster
- Cloud services: Provide essential flexible infrastructure, enabling data and system backups to be stored in a different location, lowering the impact of a local disaster
- Cybersecurity tools: Maintain operations in the face of cyber threats with intrusion detection and incident response messages
- Emergency communication tools: Facilitate rapid, mass automated communication with personnel across all involved parties to ensure employee safety and well-being post-disruption
- Dependency mapping: Allows organizations to map out relationships between all involved parties, including customers, systems, vendors and processes, to identify single points of failure before an outage occurs
- Scenario testing: Enables frequent and large-scale automated testing of disaster recovery plans to give teams the chance to practice for potential crises
Common mistakes businesses should avoid when trying to build resilience
When it comes to risk management and disaster recovery, there are many moving parts to keep track of. Make sure to always have your organization’s broader goals in mind, rather than focusing on immediate threats. That kind of short-term thinking will lead to assumptions and overlooked issues.
Another major pitfall of building business continuity plans and pursuing strategic growth is creating rigid structures. Part of the reason resilience works so well is that the ideals put into place enable you to pivot as needed during disruptions. If you negate this need for flexibility, you may find your team trapped during a crisis. Key strategies to avoid rigidity include implementing more flexible work schedule arrangements, training employees to prioritize self-care and focusing on reaching the desired outcome more than how much time is actually spent in the office.
Too many businesses learn too late that one of the biggest mistakes in building resilience is accidentally creating a non-productive workplace. If you deplete employees’ energy through constant pressure to always do better, the team will burn out. Punishing mistakes, rather than using them as learning opportunities, discourages creative thinking and creates a blame-focused culture. Avoid this common conundrum by fostering a sense of community within your team, making space for employees to come forward with any questions or concerns that may arise as resilience is introduced.
Key challenges businesses face:
- Resource scarcity
- Poor communication
- Change resistance
- Unshared purposes and goals
- Lack of collaboration
- Budgeting for uncertainty
- Outside economic factors
Risks in the current business and organization industry
Major consulting firms and industry analysts are always looking out for the most threatening and damaging risks. Though they may vary by industry, today’s top risks are widely agreed upon.
Top risks to organizations:
- Operational disruptions: Almost every organization relies on the supply chain in some way. When distribution fails, geopolitical issues affect sourcing, or materials become scarce, your business’s timeline can be affected.
- Regulatory changes: Businesses are facing increasing scrutiny across environmental, social and government organizations. If you are found to be breaking code or bending compliance, the business can be fined, and your company’s reputation could tank in the public eye.
- Violated data privacy: Cybersecurity consistently ranks among the top concerns. From data breaches to ransomware attacks, the violation of a customer’s right to control how their personal information is collected, used or shared is a major risk.
- Unethical leadership: A company is only as trustworthy as its leader. If an organization’s CEO or owner is found to support unethical behavior or proven to be dishonest, it may result in a public controversy and financial loss.
- Environmental disasters: Floods, storms and fires can destroy entire factories, energy grids and roads, leading to operational downtime and long-term blackouts.
Mitigating and managing risks through resilience
Preventing disruptions is impossible—but that doesn’t mean you can’t be prepared. With the right combination of risk mitigation (preventative measures focused on reducing the impact of specific threats) and operational resilience (the ability to adapt and recover efficiently), your business will be able to rebound more quickly in the event of a crisis. Combining these two approaches is the key to ensuring long-term sustainability and creating opportunities for growth.
Operational resilience vs. business continuity
When we talk about operational resilience, we’d be amiss not to mention business continuity. Where operational resilience describes proactive methods for withstanding disruption, business continuity refers to technical, reactive plans, often outlined in detailed and tested steps to be taken to resume normal operations after a crisis.
Resilience builds the overall framework, while business continuity provides plans for potential “what ifs.” An organization should have both.
Do contingency plans and disaster recovery plans relate to business continuity?
The business continuity plan is how a company will continue to operate during a major disruption, and the contingency plan is what the team members will do if specific and smaller events occur. The disaster recovery plan is how we get back to normal after a crisis. Together, these three types of plans create a well-rounded and comprehensive strategy for operational resilience.
How resilience fosters steady and strategic growth
Investing in resilience is one of the keys to strategic growth. If you look at the most successful organizations, you’ll see that resilience enables them to turn roadblocks into opportunities. For example, rather than seeing a challenge as a stop sign, any issues that arise are taken as an opportunity to re-evaluate and emerge stronger than ever. Suddenly, they aren’t falling behind—they’re setting the pace in their industry.
prioritizing resilience also makes room for future innovation. When a natural disaster or supply chain issue occurs, your team will be able to address it. Instead of panicking, they can focus their energy and creativity on finding ways to improve the system and business as a whole. Without that resilient mindset in place, your employees may not feel supported to take that game-changing initiative.
Providing your staff with a clear mission motivates teams. If you make it clear that you value resilience, the workplace will feel more unified and collaborative, even during tough times. Nothing unites a company like a shared purpose.
How can external consultants support reliable resilience and strategic growth?
Oftentimes, even if you put your best employees on it, your team is just too close to the problem to fully examine the company for vulnerabilities and solutions. An external business consultant can provide an objective and expert perspective. With years of experience and proven methodologies, a business consultant can identify blind spots, streamline operations, manage the processes of change and create accurate and actionable plans.
What should you consider when hiring a business consultant?
Though consultants have extensive industry knowledge, they may not be familiar with your specific processes and company culture. When planning your ideal timeline for change and implementing business continuity plans, factor in time for onboarding.
If you’re hiring a consultant from a reputable company, like CGI, they’ll be able to provide examples of proven results. Ask for references to get a better understanding of past clients and their experiences. If the business consulting firm has a history of successful outcomes and can provide a modern, innovative strategy specific to your needs, they’re worth the hire.
What are CGI’s solutions for building operational resilience?
As a global IT and business consulting firm, CGI offers a diverse range of technology, services and solutions designed to help companies and communities build resilience. The “right” solution for you and your business will depend on your needs and industry.
CGI’s operational resilience solutions:
- CGI PulseAI: Encourages organizations to use AI without fear of their values and data being violated in a myriad of industries, aiding in risk assessment, report generation, regulatory document generation, customer churn analysis and more
- Safety Data Sheet Automation: Reduces the traditional manual effort needed to review and analyze safety data with AI, automating data capture, discovering enhanced insights and transforming business processes
- CGI IntelliMigrate360: Uses event-driven technology designed on a scalable cloud architecture to document efficiency and reduce manual processes with automation
- CGI Trade 360: Used mainly in the banking industry, this platform enables banks to provide a full range of trade finance services, anywhere, anytime, on a single integrated platform
- CGI OpenGrid Network: Increases grid reliability in the utilities industry during extreme weather events by improving the speed of incident response, strengthening network operations and driving smart decision making
Let CGI help your business build operational resilience today
You don’t have to manage business continuity and operational resilience on your own. The expert consultants at CGI have decades of experience to help you on your journey. Contact us today to get started.
