Customer Value Story:
Planning for the Unexpected

The pandemic has disrupted operating models of businesses across the globe. Since the beginning of 2020 – and since the launch of our company in 2006 – LogicManager has been working with our clients to help them pivot and prepare. We have over 15 years of experience under our belt of helping customers avoid all sorts of risks and scandals.

Over this past critical year, we’ve collected over 200 value stories from our customers about how they’ve leveraged our guidance to drive their businesses forward. This series delves deeper into those stories in hopes of helping other businesses throughout these challenging times.

Topic:

Creating a business continuity planning process that sets your business up for long-term success.

Introduction

This company is a repeat protagonist in our series of LogicManager customer value stories.

In 2020, we wrote about helping this bank channel chaos into creativity during the early days of the pandemic when there was an influx of PPP loan requests (check out the full story here).

Today, we’ll share a new story about this client that explains how they’ve continually been able to overcome the ongoing challenges of the pandemic with LogicManager’s robust business continuity solutions.

Challenge

It’s important for all organizations to have a Business Continuity Plan (BCP) in place, but in the banking industry, it’s critical. A bank’s BCP helps them reduce financial loss, ensure customers can continue to be served, maintain the ability to comply with regulatory requirements, diminish the negative impact on credit quality and so much more.

This particular client’s Business Continuity Plan was in the process of being updated when COVID-19 threw them off course. Their process for developing and updating their BCP initially involved holding in-person interviews with department heads to gather information about various impacts to their core processes in case of an outage:

• Who are their key team members?
• What vendors or applications do they rely on?
• What are their workaround processes?
• How long can they be without phones or laptops?

This data collection process was scattered across multiple spreadsheets, and the process from start to finish took several months. Once the interview process was completed and properly documented, it would take our client another one to two months to perform an analysis on the information, determine the criticality of their processes to properly prioritize in the event of a business continuity outage and ultimately compile all of the information into an organized and comprehensive BCP to disseminate across the organization.

This time-consuming, disintegrated process for developing a BCP was difficult enough, and when the pandemic hit, our client was no longer able to hold interviews in person. They were faced with the urgent need to accelerate decision making, on top of the onslaught of new challenges associated with transitioning to a remote model.

COMPLIMENTARY DOWNLOAD: BCP CHECKLIST

What should every strong Business Continuity Plan include? Download our free BCP checklist to find out.

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Solution

LogicManager was built to help organizations perform better by streamlining processes so they can meet challenges head on. Through LogicManager, our client was able to overhaul their original process for developing their business continuity plans and leverage a new, expedited process within our system. Here’s how:

• First, their Customer Success Representative configured our client’s system in a way that allowed department heads to simply answer a series of questions and provide any updates on the plan from the previous year.
• Then, our team built out a workflow process that automatically routes plans requiring additional updates to executives for approval, and back once more if additional updates are necessary.
• Using our reporting tools, we were able to create automatic Business Impact Analysis (BIA) calculations to determine the criticality of our clients’ processes so that there is consistency and automation in determining this factor (plus, they won’t need to do these calculations in Excel anymore). This lets them easily determine which processes need to be prioritized during an outage.

Every step along the way, the Business Continuity team is kept in the loop so that they always know where things stand.

Business Outcome

Most directly, LogicManager impacted this client’s business in a positive way by increasing efficiencies. Our team and powerful software tools took a process that previously cost hours of manual data manipulation and took 4-5 months to complete and turned it into an automated process that is completed from start to finish in less than one month.

But what other benefits, both internal and external, is this client experiencing now that they have an efficient, standardized process for BCP review and development?

• This new process makes it easy to engage others in the BCP development process. Instead of completing interviews in a one-on-one environment, the questions can be shared with other frontline employees that can provide their opinions and contribute to a more holistic picture of the organization’s business continuity challenges.
• Disruptions to business continuity can have costly consequences. By taking a risk-based approach through LogicManager, this client will keep those consequences at bay because their plans will always be up to date, can be updated quickly whenever needed and are built with the entire enterprise in mind. This means they’ll avoid things like physical harm to employees or customers, reputational damage, data integrity loss, negligence litigation and more.
• A solid BCP is central to being prepared for potential disruptions and solidifying trust with external parties such as vendors, clients or potential shareholders. This organization has multiple business units, functions and teams to keep track of; having insight into which aspects are critical for internal operations and which provide critical services to their downstream dependencies is key for proper resource allocation and avoiding unnecessary delays in the case of an event.

This past year and half has taught us the true value of preparing for business continuity disasters. It’s never been so critical to expect the unexpected, prepare for it and continuously adapt. Having a BCP that’s built on risk management best practices sets your business up for success.

LogicManager’s robust enterprise risk management software helps you inherently take a risk-based approach to managing every department of your business. See what’s possible for your organization today by booking your free demo here.