Category: Journey

Business Resilience, Innovation, Journey

Active Resilience and Compliance across your Partners and Suppliers

Active Resilience and Compliance across your supply chain a Webinar / Podcast sponsored by The BCI and Aspenify

Part of our continuing series: Active Resilience and Compliance

Supply Chain Resiliency: A Top Priority for Organizations

Supply chain resiliency has become a top priority for organizations in recent years. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the vulnerabilities in global supply chains. An actionable risk resilience mindset is the answer. Companies are now looking for ways to make their supply-chains more resilient and better able to withstand disruptions.

In January, our panel continued the discussion with our BCI Webinar on Active Resilience in the Supply Chain and have converted it into a convenient podcast. One key topic being how the biggest asks from customers is for increased visibility and transparency in supply chain management. “15% of Retail and Business Leaders believe they do not have a resilient Supply Chain.” (Wincanton Censuswide Survey 2022)

“15% of Retail and Business Leaders believe they do not have a resilient Supply Chain.”

Wincanton Censuswide Survey 2022

Business Continuity Planning (BCP)

Business Continuity Planning (BCP) is a crucial aspect of supply chain resiliency as it helps organizations identify and mitigate potential risks and disruptions. This includes being able to track the performance of suppliers, as well as their risk preparedness and adoption of current practices.
However, what we are finding, is that while most organizations have made good progress internally, they have not made as much progress with their suppliers.

Additionally, suppliers are often unprepared for customers driving their posture around resilience. A 2022 survey showed that “96% of respondents with understanding of BCP felt that having a plan would keep businesses trading or reduce costs incurred when the business may have otherwise failed.” (BIBA – British Insurance Broker’s Association).

“96% of respondents with understanding of BCP felt that having a plan would keep businesses trading or reduce costs incurred when the business may have otherwise failed.”

BIBA – British Insurance Broker’s Association.

Changing Customer Expectations and the 3 P’s of Active Resilience

We are all customers, and as consumers. We all want to have our expectations managed, and what we do know is that our expectations are ever increasing. This is driving a shift in being much more demanding in terms of what we expect from companies. This is translating into it becoming a point of differentiation.

We are often judging companies based on our interactions with other companies around us, rather than just the company we are directly dealing with.

This is why it is important for companies to consider supply chain resilience as a key part of their value proposition, rather than just an operational function. Reduction of risk with a good BCP in place can provide support for insurance claims and also your funding.

1. Active Priorities are really about making sure the company has set a stake in the ground in terms of the top resiliency priorities that you have, and then how that applies to impact in terms of cost, reputation and social responsibility.

Secure Platforms 

What where we’re seeing a kind of shift in in our clients is this ability to move from what we call a passive or reactive Supply Chain Management from a perspective of resilience where it’s really incident based or event based, and you’re responding to a proactive approach.

We call it Active Resilience, where you have a posture that is very much prepared and engaged before the events happen. To address these challenges, companies are looking for a secure BCP platform that can extend and grow both internally and externally across the supply chain. These platforms must be able to operate on behalf of both internal and external audiences, while also being secure to prevent any potential risks. 

“…We’ve defined what we call the three P’s of Active Resilience. Priority, Preparedness and Performance…”

Steve Hanney — Founder & CEO, Aspenify

BCP as a Core Part of Companies’ Value Proposition

Business Continuity Planning (BCP) is also becoming a core part of companies’ value propositions. BCP is no longer seen as just an operational function. Rather as a way to differentiate against competition and work with customers with a level of transparency and visibility that they never had before.

2. Active Preparedness is all about making sure that suppliers have the correct skills, accreditations and align plans in place to ensure that it limits the events where possible before they happen. It plans for the events when they do occur. So everybody knows what they’re doing.

“…By using the Aspenify Platform we’ve been able to better understand and manage the risks across our supply chain. Flexibility was important to us and the ability to meet the different requirements from Senior Executive to local site managers was vital to ensure adoption.”

(Nigel Kay, Wincanton — Group Head of Risk and Business Continuity).

Examples of Supply Chain Resiliency in Action

At Wincanton PLC, for example, they have already implemented Vantage BCP with Aspenify. Vantage BCP is a flexible system that allows for changes to be made when needed, rather than having a rigid system. This is important because as the UK’s 2nd largest Logistics Company, Wincanton operates in various industries, including public, industrial, grocery and consumer, and needs to be able to adapt to the real-time feedback and changing needs of their customers.

3. Active Performance is making sure that you can monitor, both in terms of the adoption of your programme as well as the response system that you have in place.

So it’s really this shift that we’re seeing in the market effectively, as it relates to suppliers, particularly, to really get control of the BCP process.

Supply chain resiliency has become a top priority for organizations. Companies are looking for ways to make their supply chains more resilient. They also need digital tools to enable them to adapt to the changing expectations of customers. This includes deploying secure platforms and implementing BCP as a core part of their value proposition.

Businesses are able to adapt to the changing needs of different industries so to build supply chains that meet the needs of their customers. The Aspenify team, along with our partners, have provided a comprehensive digital application solution for Business Continuity Planning and Incident Management across 200+ locations with Vantage BCP.

Take the First Step to Active Resiliency with our Blog Series:
5 simple steps: How Can Business Resilience provide your competitive edge?

At Aspenify, we provide a proven approach, combined with innovative digital-ready software tools, to enable you to shift to Active Business Resilience; to improve compliance and exceed the demands and expectations of your customers, partners, and employees.

To find out more or book a Demo, contact Aspenify at: sales@aspenify.com

Book a Demo

Business Resilience, Innovation, Journey

How can Business Resilience provide your competitive edge

Move to Active Business Resilience in 5 steps

“The world is experiencing a level of disruption and business risk not seen in generations. Some companies freeze and fail, while others innovate, advance and even thrive. The difference is resilience”

(Mckinsey)

Business Resilience providing a competitive edge may sound like a bold statement, but in leading organisations, resilience is moving from being an operational consideration to a strategic advantage. Here we explore why this is important and how you can make that shift to active business resilience for the Digital- Era in 5 steps.

Business Continuity Planning (BCP) is a foundation for all modern businesses and organisations yet in many ways is an afterthought revisted only when an incident occurs. To us, this is known as an Unplanned or Reactive Business Continuity and taking this approach can expose organisations to higher levels of risk, and cost millions in terms financial losses, endanger people’s lives and negatively impact customer relationships for years to come.

A break in continuity for a small company can cost £10,000 / hour at a minimum and in many cases for large enterprises runs into the £1millions

(Datto)

It is even more astonishing, that given the recent humanitarian disasters such as the pandemic to war in Ukraine, which highlight the unpredictability and interconnectedness of businesses, that over 51% of all businesses have a sub-par or ineffective business continuity plan (Economic Times).

Whereas organisations that can provide best in class solutions for continuity and embed these practices across their culture can thrive in a world where change and disruption are the new norm.

But how do you make the shift?
Firstly, it means that a new type of application is required, this must create a real-time response to proactively plan for, manage and track incidents as they occur. Graphical screens and dashboards can showcase progress and status of each plan across your entire ecosystem including providing a live GPS map to visualise this across your entire network.

Once this foundation is in place, resilience can move from being a behind the scenes tool to providing strategic value — allowing you to differentiate service through greater reliability and move ahead of your competition.

Next, is the employee and team engagement that is needed with any digital-ready solution to embed the change in behaviours needed. A fanatical focus on the user experience is necessary — to remove burden, ensure ease of use and provide added value over traditional legacy approaches.

“Shifting to an Active Business Continuity solution has changed the game for us. Our Strategic customers and Partners are actively exploring the same.”

(Wincanton — Group Head of Risk and Business Continuity).

What steps do you need to take?
We see organisations that have made the transition to Active Business Resilience follow 5 simple steps:

1. Map Stakeholder Value — map out your end-to-end goals and value for all of your stakeholders including your customers, your partners, your suppliers, your employees, and leadership.

2. Align and simplify experience — create the journey to drive the change needed.

3. Lay foundations for consistency and flexibility — deploy best in class solution which provides a tailored user experience, balancing strategic priorities and local capabilities.

4. Balance push and pull — focus on employee engagement to build advocates ensuring positive momentum and a pull from across the organization.

5. Adapt and innovate continuously.

At Aspenify, we provide a proven approach, combined with innovative digital-ready software tools, to guide you through these 5 steps, enabling you to shift to Active Business Resilience — to meet the demands and expectations of your customers, partners, and employees.

To find out more contact us at: sales@aspenify.com