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The COVID experience woke senior leaders up to the crisis threat, and they finally got serious about crisis preparations. But not all crisis preparedness measures are created equal.
For instance, organisations will often consider themselves fully prepared after putting together crisis management plans without the requisite simulations needed to ensure that all workers are comfortable performing the tasks assigned to them. What should they be doing, instead?
Challenges to effective crisis preparedness
Indeed, pursuing the right crisis preparedness measures matters more than ever in this new normal of heightened threats. Latent challenges have also become more acute, as new challenges have surfaced.
That’s not the only challenge to effective crisis preparedness exacerbated by the pandemic. The ubiquity of corporate communications tools, too, make it more difficult for crisis communications to get through traditional channels.
The advantages of digitising crisis preparedness
What can be done? Digitising your crisis preparedness processes with digital critical event management software is the best place to start.
And that requires investing in software solutions and related services designed to manage your organisation’s preparation, response, and recovery from the events that impact its continuity, operations, and safety.
Other benefits of digitising crisis preparedness measures include:
- Improved communication and coordination
- Operational efficiency
- Better visibility and situational awareness
- Enhanced threat forecasting
- Leaves an audit trail
- Reduced costs
Digital crisis preparedness capabilities
What capabilities matter for effective crisis preparedness? For starters, buyers should consider critical event management systems and multiple use case solutions that ensure continuous improvement.
A look at the market suggests the following capabilities stand out:
- Crisis management and communications. Critical event management solutions should apply best practices to plan for, respond to, and manage critical events and exercises. Built on international standards, such as ISO 22398, these solutions should enable faster response, better collaboration using plans and playbooks, smart workflows, and real-time dashboards and insights.
Furthermore, these single systems should help organisations manage complex communications, centralising, approving, and standardising their crisis response, to provide effective communication pathways for all aspects of critical event management. - Incident response plans and checklists. Best-practice digital libraries should come included, so that organisations can easily use their critical event management solutions to create crisis strategies and action plans for different types of events.
- Welfare checks. Critical event management solutions should also enable organisations to send welfare check messages to relevant staff. Organisations will then be able to collate the replies that come back to identify who needs assistance and prioritise follow-up actions.
With the next major crisis just around the corner, you are only as prepared as the systems and processes you have in place.
Fortunately, rapid innovation in the critical event management space has left organisations in a better place than before.
But you have to avail yourself of those innovations, pursuing smart investments in digitising crisis preparedness measures with critical event management software optimised to effectively manage any event (big or small) through its entire lifecycle, by enabling faster response, better collaboration, decision-making, and continuous improvement. For more capabilities to consider, download our crisis management buyer’s guide.
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