Customer Centric Resilience in Account Management

For many continuity, risk, and resilience professionals, the last 2.5 years have been… yikes. It seems like the world keeps finding new and interesting ways to start burning – from pandemic to supply chain issues, cybersecurity threats, wildfires, hurricanes, and a multinational war. We all wish that we could wave a wand to prevent these tragedies from ever happening in the first place. Though, the silver lining of the past 2.5 years is that large organizations have started to understand the importance of business resilience and have been investing in people and other resources to build the actionable intelligence that is necessary to prevent, respond, and recover from business disruptions.

Account Management

Many of our customers have been hopping up and down about the importance of this preparedness for years. Finally, they are getting the executive buy-in that they’ve wanted all along. Not only is there an increased appreciation and focus from senior leadership regarding business resilience against the seemingly unending torrent of significant global disruptions, but there is also an increased awareness of how important operational resilience is in general, which is a shared realization that will persist even if, or rather ‘when’, the world eventually calms down.

Thankfully, the wealth of resources that we have available to our customers along with the warmth and openness of our customer community truly makes my role as an Account Manager at Fusion unique. Risk management and our SaaS solutions are tricky and complex pursuits. While I am far from an expert in either area, in my time at Fusion, I’ve been absolutely floored by the depth of experience and knowledge of the resources that we are able to present to our customers. The essence of my role comes down to listening to my customers: to understand their unique challenges, goals, and vision. I then act as a conduit to a wide variety of industry experts, technical specialists, solutions engineers, and many others to support my customers in defining their strategy to progress forward in a way that drives the most value.

In my role as an Account Manager at Fusion, I support a wide variety of customers who often ask me how mature their program is compared to where it is expected to be. My answer is always the same: there is so much variety in the stages of each program’s journey, so a hypothetical comparison is not the most helpful. I also support massive global blue-chip companies who have hardly scratched the surface of risk management along with much smaller regionalized companies who run world-class comprehensive operational resilience programs. The focus should be on where their program is at today and how to create a roadmap with tangible, continuous improvements that will drive it towards that goal. I also love the synergy between customers – I often introduce my customers to others with similar programs and challenges but who are a little further advanced than them and can help guide their path. While the most useful insight can come from peers, customers can also profit from Fusion’s various industry experts to help develop their vision and journey.

ENGAGE Customer Community

One of my favorite things about Fusion is our vibrant customer community – the likes of which I’ve never seen at my past organizations nor ever even heard of. Since the start of the COVID pandemic, as part of our ENGAGE Customer Community, we’ve provided a weekly Community Exchange where we bring customers together in an open forum. We also have frequent customer spotlights and product showcases where customers can ask questions to the collective hive mind of the Fusion customer base. As someone who started working at Fusion during the height of the pandemic, I’m excited that Fusion is restarting our in-person events to continue bringing customers together, with plans to expand this to include industry roundtables and regional events. I love bringing customers together and seeing them build relationships and share ideas for advancement, and I’m excited that I’ll get to begin doing so in person soon.

Key Takeaways

As mentioned, it is important for customers to not focus on where their program is at today, but where they should be. Robust, comprehensive resilience programs can take many years to build, even without being short-staffed and budget-strapped (which many companies are). While the folks who are the best of the best make it look easy – it isn’t, or wasn’t, like everything else in life. By leaning on Fusion’s wealth of industry and technology experts, engaging with our open and responsive customer community, and focusing on a medium-to-long-term roadmap based in continuous improvement, we help accelerate our customers forward towards true operational resilience.