When You Can’t Rely on a Crystal Ball, Elevate and Invest in Resilience

In today’s world, organizations face unprecedented challenges that require a new approach to resilience. The ability to not only survive but rather thrive in a constant state of disruption is now critical.

According to the IMF World Uncertainty Index, global uncertainty has multiplied while the frequency of natural disasters and cyberattacks has steadily risen. Organizations are facing the layering of complex events, making it nearly impossible to predict what’s coming next. In an ideal world, you would grab a crystal ball so that you can ask:

• Am I prepared?
• What is the impact of any given scenario on my business?
• Do I have the right controls and recovery strategies in place?
• Where are my vulnerabilities?
• Where are my strengths?
• Where should I focus my efforts?

But, with the invention of a crystal ball not on the horizon, organizations need an alternate way to gain a complete view of their important business services and be better prepared to prevent a potential disruption before it materializes. Organizations that embrace, invest in, and elevate resilience as a strategic priority are able to more proactively sense issues, analyze vulnerabilities, and adapt to the evolving environment.

The Impact of Ineffective Resilience Capabilities is Severe

Imagine a bank that experiences a catastrophic outage in its IT systems, preventing customers from accessing their accounts for several days. Imagine a manufacturer losing revenue due to a cyberattack on just one of its suppliers. This is exactly what recently happened with TSB Bank and Applied Materials.

The impact of ineffective resilience capabilities can be severe, as evidenced by TSB Bank’s operational resilience failings. TSB was going through a complex IT change management project and experienced some tech issues. These issues resulted in the disruption of critical services as well as impacted all of their branches and a significant amount of their 5.2 million customers. In some cases, the disruption to services lasted eight months. When undergoing this project, TSB did not have a clear understanding of the potential customer impact or operational risks, resulting in a regulatory fine of 48 million pounds and loss of trust from customers.

Similarly, manufacturing company Applied Materials did not proactively identify concentration risk and the impact on important business services of their operationally significant third parties. So, when one of their suppliers experienced a cyberattack, it directly impacted Applied Materials’s business, resulting in a $250 million negative impact on revenue.

In today’s fast-paced world, resilience must be a strategic priority for businesses. This is why in Deloitte’s 2022 worldwide, cross-industry survey, four out of five executives believe that their organization should create a Chief Resilience Officer role. These findings show that executives realize that resilience needs to be elevated as a strategic priority, and one way to do so would be to place a senior executive in charge of making that happen.

Saying Goodbye to Static, Disconnected Data

Let’s imagine a scenario where your organization faces a sudden disruption: chaos ensues, and you and your team scramble to gather information and make decisions. However, precious time is lost because the different teams operate in silos, and you’re operating off inconsistent and static information. Your business continuity plans are long and specific to an event – but not this event. Fully understanding the situation, gathering everything you need, and activating your response can take too long.

But what if you had a solution that brought all of the disciplines of risk and resilience together, easily integrated information from internal and external systems, and connected the dots across that information so you had a complete view of what’s required in delivering goods and services to customers? That’s why Fusion Risk Management is here: to transform how organizations approach resilience.

Traditional approaches to resilience rely on static, point-in-time information due to the manual collection and analysis of data. Teams operate in silos, relying on inconsistent information and, in turn, responding reactively. This approach leaves businesses vulnerable to disruptions and limits their ability to grow. Effective risk and resilience programs should be dynamic, taking what’s static and transforming it into digital, agile information.

Building Dynamic, Scalable, Integrated, and Proactive Resilience

The need for a new approach to risk and resilience is not just limited to specific industries or markets. It is a global issue that is affecting businesses of all sizes and in all sectors. And it’s not just about protecting the bottom line – it’s about ensuring that organizations can continue to provide goods and services to their customers, maintain their reputation, and, ultimately, thrive in an uncertain and rapidly changing world.

Establishing long-term resilience goals and starting on the resilience journey is essential for organizations that want to stay competitive in today’s changing environment. And partnering with a company like Fusion, which provides a modern and integrated approach to risk and resilience, can help organizations chart their path to resilience and stay ahead of the curve.

But how do you get started? How do you build resilience?

With Fusion’s advanced technology platform, expert services, and deep industry knowledge, we partner with clients in building resilience across their organization by bringing together the different disciplines of risk and resilience as well as connecting the dots from integrated internal and external systems and data sources. By bringing teams and information together into the same operating environment, Fusion clients can create a complete view of how their business runs, can break, and can be put back together. Teams can be more efficient and effective in their individual roles and as a company overall, saving time on manual processes and inefficiencies as well as focusing on higher impact and strategic improvements. Fusion’s cohesive, integrated solution allows for better testing, efficient preparation, and quicker response, building confidence by demonstrating resilience.

Give Resilience a Seat at the Table

In today’s business landscape, resilience is a strategic function. The cost of not being resilient is high, and organizations that prioritize resilience are more likely to survive and thrive in the face of disruption. Organizations need to elevate their programs into integrated, strategic activities and give risk and resilience teams a seat at the table.

Organizations must be able to proactively sense issues, analyze vulnerabilities, and adapt to an evolving environment. To be resilient means to have the foresight to know where to focus as well as have the ability to maneuver incidents with agility and emerge stronger. It means protecting your organization from the inevitable, minimizing impact, and adapting to the unpredictability of today’s world.

Learn more about how Fusion can help you along your resilience journey by contacting your Account Manager or requesting a demo today!