Build Resilience to Risk & Disruption: Considerations for COOs

  • August 13, 2021
  • Quantivate

Modern organizations operate in a dynamic environment, and chief operating officers have a difficult job keeping this change and complexity in sync with the broader business strategy as well as operational processes. This presents COOs with the challenge of maintaining effective risk management processes, systems, and functions that are proactive instead of reactive.

Organizations need an integrated view of risk across operational areas to build resilience to business disruptions. Understanding how risk interconnects across information management, third-party management, compliance, operations, performance, and other functions is the only way to gain a full picture of your organizationā€™s ability to address uncertainty and the impact on business strategies and objectives.

To view operational resiliency from a holistic perspective and build an effective management approach, COOs must consider and plan for common challenges.

Operational Resilience Management Challenges

Risk Data Volume and Velocity

Businesses manage substantial amounts of risk data scattered across different processes, relationships, and systems. The volume of this risk, and the speed at which it can cause disruption (or risk velocity), is capable of completely overwhelming the organization.Ā 

Distributed Business Models & Reliance on Third Parties

Business has changed significantly over the years. The brick-and-mortar approach is now extinct, and modern operations have become an intricate and interconnected web of global relationships and transactions that can impact your organization at all levels.

Constant Change

Technologies, processes, and objectives are evolving simultaneously with compliance, risk, and governance procedures. Not only does the business and its operations change, but organizations worldwide must keep up with the relentless pace of regulatory change: 257 regulatory event alerts each day on average.

An integrated information and technology architecture is crucial for organizations to develop a more strategic approach to operational risk management. COOs need complete situational awareness and visibility into risk scattered across systems, operations, processes, relationships, and data.

Understanding your risk environment and its impact on objectives requires a unified approach across departments. Cross-functional collaboration and data integration equip organizations to connect risk management to the bigger picture of operational strategy while supporting resiliency.

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