Building Everyday Resilience

When we think of business resilience, we might frame it in the context of large-scale and highly-disruptive events – the sort we’ve all become familiar with over the past three years.

These are the times when organisations are judged on their ability to pivot out of danger and ensure continuity for stakeholders, and when trust and reputations are won and lost. When customers and shareholders lose faith in a company, the consequences can be extreme, as we saw when depositors rushed to withdraw their funds from Silicon Valley Bank this year – or the infamous case of Gerald Ratner who made a public comment causing massive damage to his business.”

Like other senior executives, you might be increasingly prioritising resilience in an uncertain world. Our survey of senior executives found that more than 80% value it more today than they did in 2020. There is also near-universal agreement that resilience is critical for ‘any type of change’ facing the organisation.

However, our research also revealed that fewer than half (47%) believe their company is currently resilient, and just under half (49%) spend little or no time thinking about how they can achieve it. They say they lack the resources to address challenges relating to data security, productivity and technology innovation – which are the building blocks of resilience.

Resilience isn’t only about standing strong in the face of global catastrophe but how an organisation deals with any kind of shock. It could be the emergence of a new competitor, or a surge in demand for a retail product following a news report or viral social media trend.

Closing the resiliency gap – what can the C-suite do now?

SAS has identified five principles that can help organisations to increase resilience, and close the gap many have identified. Known as the Resiliency Rules, these principles are: speed and agility, innovation, equity and responsibility, data culture and literacy, and curiosity.

Wherever you are on your resiliency planning and data analytics journey, there are actions you can take to enact the rules and build a stronger organisation, ready for the next change. We spoke to SAS’ Nicola Furlong, Senior Director, Public Sector and Dr Laurie Miles, Senior Director of Cloud Analytics, to find out more.

1. Focus on strategic partnerships

External partners can help organisations to plug talent and resourcing gaps, and solve problems faster. A good analytics vendor will step up in times of crisis and also work alongside your teams to address everyday problems. Nicky says:

“It’s important to challenge technology vendors who see their relationship with you as transactional, and only focus their attention on your organisation during the purchasing and renewal process.

Look instead for continuity – a technology company that is truly invested in your organisation and goes the extra mile, such as introducing you to another partner or one of their customers who can share their experience. The deeper and broader the relationship, the more valuable it is to the customer, who can play a role in shaping future products. They also have a partner they can rely on when a crisis strikes – for example, during Covid, we worked very closely with HMRC to rapidly repurpose its platforms to issue rather than receive payments during furlough.”

A trusted vendor, delivering SaaS (software as a service) solutions, helps organisations to address some of the shortfalls that might reduce resiliency, as Laurie explains:

“Surprisingly, many large companies are still reliant on on-premises software, and don’t have a disaster recovery and data back-up strategy for mission-critical risk decisioning systems. Moving data to the cloud means that data is automatically backed up, and there is a disaster recovery system in place. A strong relationship with your vendor makes cloud migration and data management more seamless, reducing the demand on internal technical teams.”

2. Use data analytics to look forward

The availability of data analytics means that black swan events are more like grey swan – still rare and disruptive, but increasingly possible to predict because we can stress-test multiple scenarios more efficiently using machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI). Laurie says:

3. Democratise data analytics – but don’t forget the human element

Data and analytics underpin the Resiliency Rules because they support better decision-making not just during a crisis but at any time. More than 90% of the senior executives we polled agree – but over a third say they struggle to get the right insights because they’re overwhelmed by the amount of data they have. Other barriers include recruiting data scientists, and a lack of talent to drive innovation.

This is why democratising data analytics is so important. A no/low-code AI and analytics platform puts data in the hands of those who use it every day, so they can tackle problems and innovate. They can be confident that the data is managed within a compliant framework to ensure quality, and that models are regularly tested and challenged to deliver ethical and equitable outcomes.

But data can’t tell the whole story, as Nicky says:

“You have to bring the human in, and test what the data is telling us. Data literacy is about interpreting the data, and questioning whether a decision will lead to unintended consequences. You have to ask whether a decision adds value, and solves the cause of a problem rather than just the symptoms. This is why data analytics needs to be decoupled from computer science, and brought into business training.”

4. Invest in training

The world is changing so quickly that upskilling the workforce is essential for resilience, especially when the job market is tight. There are free or affordable online courses that can efficiently plug skills gaps, from data literacy to programming and data science. Giving employees time to undertake training is, as Laurie says, an investment in the future:

“Training budgets might be slashed in times of trouble when the focus is on solving the problems of today to get to tomorrow. But long-term, employees need the skills to respond effectively to future challenges.”

5. Make ethics and diversity part of your resilience strategy

Equity and responsibility are one of the Resiliency Rules but they can sometimes take a backseat when senior leaders are fighting fires. Laurie says:

“Their technical team might develop an AI or machine learning model that solves a commercial problem but that model may use a protected characteristic that could disadvantage some groups. It would be easy to turn a blind eye to it in the short-term but their long-term resilience is likely to be undermined because the public loses trust.”

Organisations also increasingly recognise that diversity is another value that will strengthen their decision-making capabilities, as Nicky concludes:

Download your copy of the SAS Business Resiliency Report, which includes details of how to implement the Resiliency Rules.

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