Disasters that directly affect the operations and reputation of organisations are fast becoming everyday occurrences. As business continuity evolves into operational resilience, how can organisations be prepared?

The Growth of Operational Resilience

As business environments become more complex, operational resilience continues to be an area that many organisations are taking more seriously.  There are countless examples of businesses who have been brought to their knees by not considering business continuity through a lack of foresight and poor crisis management.

Operational resilience is the entrenching of processes behaviours, capabilities and systems which allows organisations to carry on trading, regardless of any disruption that occurs. It is prudent to consider this as part of an organisation’s business continuity strategy to ensure that they can carry on as normal should the worst happen and a disaster strikes.

Reasons for Business Continuity to Evolve into Operational Resilience

Aside from the various regulatory requirements that have been set out in the Bank of England’s discussion paper, there are some strong commercial reasons for business continuity to evolve into operational resilience:

• Emerging, complex and inter-connected business models will expose organisations to new and evolving vulnerabilities.
• Without a firm-wide and systematic approach to operational resilience these vulnerabilities will drive commercial risk and threaten growth.
• Recent high-profile events have demonstrated the consequences of operational failures in a more connected world.
• While much attention has focused on consumer banking, the same commercial imperative can be seen across the financial services industry.
• Firms which are perceived to be operationally resilient are likely to derive both longer term competitive advantage and mitigate strategic and operating costs by taking a more holistic approach.

Final Thoughts

While business continuity has the potential to evolve into operational resilience, there are many different facets to ensuring that the two work together harmoniously. Having a holistic approach when it comes to the evolution of business continuity into operational resilience will stand your organisation in good stead for withstanding any potential disasters which may strike.

Join us on Thursday 27th February 2020 at 6.00pm for our next “Friends of Fortress Dinner” where we will discuss how business continuity has evolved into operational resilience. Our guest speaker is Rachael Elliott, Head of Thought Leadership, Business Continuity Institute. Register your interest here https://fortressas.com/news-2/friends_of_fortress/

To find out more and to book visit to our recovery centre https://fortressas.com/contact/.