Why resilience matters
Resiliency has become a hot topic in many industries, including financial services. As major companies are relying on old, complex and silo-structured IT landscapes – and are operating on equally outdated and disconnected processes – building up operational resilience has become a crucial factor for companies that are willing to survive the next crisis, particularly in an interlinked and digital environment (this is especially true for financial institutions). On top of that, many of today’s organisations provide services that have become vital to customers, so maintaining those services is not only in the interest of those organisations themselves, but also in the interest of the community. In light of this, both companies and regulators agree that resilience is a fundamental aspect in any organisation willing to serve its stakeholders at best.
Given the complexity of the topic, many have tried to define resilience by focusing on specific areas and, for this reason, most of the past attempts at defining operational resilience have been necessarily biased, for example too focused on cyber resilience or on the risk management aspect of building up resilience.
However, organisations need to treat operational resilience in a holistic way and as a key driver for their entire business, and not just as an operational, risk or cyber matter. Resilience – be it «operational» or «business» – is a key strategic topic that goes beyond what may look like a «back-office» kind of problem.
At PwC, we tried to look at the very core of operational and business resilience, and we have experienced that resilience is best defined from a customer’s perspective and by looking at the provision of key business services and products, end-to-end. We thus define operational resiliency as «an organisation’s ability to protect and sustain the core business services that are key for its customers, both during business as usual and at times of operational stress or disruption.»
- An effective operational resiliency framework should cover the following elements:
the capacity to adapt and respond to stress scenarios - the ability to maintain the key services to customers in any situation
- the capability to retain critical management activities
- the willingness to learn from past mistakes so that they will not happen again
- the ability to train and prepare your staff to manage difficult situations
- the capability to build efficient communication channels throughout the organisation
- the eagerness to embed a pro-active culture when it comes to managing operational needs, threats and risks (as opposed to the more common reactive approach to risks)
Operational resilience is clearly not just another buzzword in the management world, but rather a very important set of characteristics that enables your organisation to survive in an ever-changing business environment. Brace the unexpected and persist.
Find out more on why operational resilience matters, what is the path to achieve resilience and how PwC can help you in your journey.
