In our previous article, Simon Bartlett discussed incoming regulatory requirements to demonstrate operational resilience through:

• Defining strategic objectives and framework for operational resilience
• Identifying important business services
• Setting impact tolerances for each
• Mapping important business services
• Carrying out scenario testing of key business services
• Incorporating learnings to drive continual improvements in resilience
• Embedding a culture of operational resilience

While there is an obvious need to adhere to the new requirements, the exercises themselves can also provide additional opportunity to drive benefits for firms of all shapes and sizes.

The current landscape, driven by COVID-19 has highlighted the importance of operational resilience for the very survival of firms as rapid disruption unfolded. The Bank of England refers to the ability of firms to prevent, adapt, respond, and recover and learn from operational disruptions. Whilst not preventable, we have seen great examples of some firms quickly adapting and responding to the challenges created by the pandemic, though for some this was a painful process which shone a light on a number of vulnerabilities, such as when local lockdowns took off-shore servicing capacity off-line.

As part of the requirement to map key business services, some firms are taking the opportunity to deliver improvements to their end-to-end processes. Leveraging resource budgeted for operational resilience to not only map key business processes, but explore beyond the regulatory requirement at why, where and how work moves through processes; issues and inefficiencies can be swiftly identified and remedied. Taking this approach means that resilience, efficiency and effectiveness can be improved alongside each other, making Operation Resilience programmes a key driver of value as opposed to a pure operational cost.

A framework for unlocking further value

Creating a framework is vital to ensure programmes can achieve the breadth and depth required. As we’ve been supporting clients in seizing opportunities to accelerate change, the major areas we have identified to focus on are:

• Establishing process governance
• Defining process taxonomies and mapping standards
• Training internal teams on how to map against the standards
• Facilitating virtual workshops to capture ‘as is’ processes and then design the ‘to be’ incorporating a full range of improvements (from standardisation to automation)
• Managing the rollout of the new processes across the firm
• Measurement and reporting of the new processes