
Digital transformation
Digitalization comes with greater pace of change leading to new and fast-evolving risks
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To understand the importance of operational resilience, it is necessary to first understand what exactly it means. Operational resilience is an enterprise’s ability to prevent, adapt, and respond to, recover from, and learn from operational disruptions, while maintaining uninterrupted business operations and protecting people and assets. It involves identifying essential functions and prioritizing essential activities to ensure their continuity during major disruptions.
Disruptions can be unpredictable and sometimes unavoidable. They strike without any warning, preventing the ability to react quickly and appropriately. Consider the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, or the blocked Suez Canal—these all occurred within a few years, alongside an increase in cyber-attacks targeting organizations when they are most vulnerable. Companies lacking resilience risk significant reputational and financial damage and, consequently, the loss of customers as a result. However, by preparing for the unpredictable, your organization can become more resilient and better equipped to recover from incidents. In essence, operational resilience is more than just a new regulatory requirement; it is essential for survival and growth in today’s business environment.
The last few years have underscored the need for operational resilience. The pandemic revealed that most organizations were unprepared for a big disruption. Various current developments now make another disruptive event increasingly likely. Digital transformation is rapidly changing work practices and systems, accelerating the speed of new and emerging risks. Organizations no longer have the option of whether to enhance their operational resilience—especially as regulators increase pressure on industries like financial services that must comply with legislation on operational resilience. Geopolitical events further elevate the risk of disruptions. As global interdependence grows, supply chain issues in one region can ripple across the world as demonstrated when a single ship blocked the Suez Canal, leading to inventory shortages and delivery delays. Dependence on third-party providers amplifies this vulnerability.
Digitalization comes with greater pace of change leading to new and fast-evolving risks
A wave of new and evolving regulatory requirements as governments tighten control
High dependencies on global supply chains increase the impact of local disruptions
Significant disruptions occur more frequently than you might expect, as data reveals. These events can lead to severe operational breakdowns, with far-reaching consequences for organizations and their customers.
41% of organizations that suffered a material incident say it was caused by a third party (WEF)
Cyber-attacks increased by 38% in 2022 (Bank of England, quoted by Infosecurity Magazine)
Achieving long-term, operational resilience requires an integrated approach beyond traditional business continuity management or data recovery. This approach combines various resilience elements, such as business continuity planning, disaster recovery, and third-party risk management, into a cohesive framework. A siloed approach—where each pillar is effective on its own but isolated from others—is insufficient, as unexpected interactions between them can occur during disruptions. An integrated operational resilience approach is essential.
André Kunz Expert IT Architect, SuvaIt’s extremely important that we have the right
software enabling us to achieve long-term transparency and customer focus. ARIS makes this possible.
New regulations can feel like a burden. But they can also help you navigate business uncertainty. Operational resilience regulations are expanding globally, with varying laws emerging across regions (e.g., CPS 230 in Australia, Sound Practices in the US, or the Operational Resilience Framework in the UK). The more locations an organization operates in, the higher the likelihood it must comply with multiple local regulations. For example, the EU’s Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) for the financial services industry will apply to any organization doing business in the EU, regardless of location, as of January 2025. Addressing operational resilience through continuous regulatory management is far more efficient than using ad-hoc approaches for each new regulation.
Operational resilience is a dynamic and ever-evolving challenge, as new threats and regulations continuously emerge. To stay ahead, organizations must remain agile and adapt proactively to shifting demands.
An integrated approach to operational resilience is essential to ensure compliance and build an effective shield against disruptions. A combined view of business and IT processes is important to understand the whole picture of your operations. A combination of tools like business process analysis, process mining, and risk and compliance management offer a competitive advantage by enabling a comprehensive approach that applies to all current and future regulations.
At the core of your business, processes connect everything you do. ARIS offers unmatched transparency, enabling every team member to clearly understand relationships, interdependencies, and impacts. This clarity is essential for enhancing operational resilience and ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements.
An effective toolkit for operational resilience comprises a well-balanced integration of various disciplines, use cases, and assets.
Business Process Analysisgives you insights into the business and the transparency needed to analyze the processes supporting it. This helps you identify important business services and make them resilient to disruption.
Process Mining helps you understand how your processes are really executed based on measured data. So, you can detect weaknesses and inconsistencies that enable process optimization.
Risk and Compliance Management includes identifying your risks, assessing them for impact and probability as well as taking appropriate measures to minimize them. To achieve operational resilience, you need to control all your risks and related assets.
Operations Optimization in the context of operational resilience involves understanding all elements that affect important business services. With these insights, you can conduct scenario testing for various types of disruption and address any gaps. Risk and compliance management, business continuity, and the application landscape all contribute to optimizing the operating model.
Regulatory Management is about ensuring your company is compliant by being in control of all relevant regulations. Mapping regulatory requirements to your business landscape creates the necessary transparency needed to clearly understand where and how regulatory issues could impact your operations. Regular control tests ensure you are compliant with regulations and internal policies.
Service Provider Management entails overseeing and coordinating the activities of third-party service providers to ensure they meet the organization’s requirements and standards. Service provider management is crucial for operational resilience because it ensures that the third-party services essential to your organization are reliable, secure, and capable of maintaining continuity during disruptions.
Application Landscape refers to the systems, policies, and technologies needed to protect business operations from threats. It considers business strategy and risk tolerance, providing guidance through reference architectures, operating model blueprints, standard security patterns, and foundational policies and principles for solution architects.
Governance involves implementing policies, guidelines, standards, and controls to manage change effectively. In the context of operational resilience, it includes activities such as documenting the ownership of all ICT assets, assigning responsibilities for risk-related roles, building workflows to embed risk management processes within the organization, and using policies to guide planning and change management.
Business Continuity is an organization’s ability to continue delivering products or services following a disruptive incident. It involves anticipating potential threats, identifying critical locations, IT systems, processes, staff and external suppliers, and defining how to keep critical processes and systems operational.
Supporting processes are the workflows that ensure ‘Important Business Services’ (IBSs) function properly. By mapping these processes to IBSs, organizations can pinpoint which processes are essential to delivering these key services.
Important Business Services are the services that a firm provides, that, if disrupted, could threaten its stability or even the entire operations. Examples include payment processing, customer support, and critical infrastructure.
Critical Resources are the essential elements that enable an organization to continue its operations even during disruptions. These resources are vital for achieving operational resilience and include technology, people, processes, facilities, information, and third parties.
Regina Janitsch Senior Manager Organization and Process Management, OeKB GroupIn short, ARIS is easy to use, secure and absolutely transparent.
Successful Operational Resilience is achieved through three key phases: setting a clear strategy, analyzing the operating model, and continuously testing, learning, and monitoring.
The ARIS Suite offers tools for deep analysis of processes and operations, empowering you to identify areas for improvement and make fast, informed decisions. Through Business Process Analysis and Process Mining, gain invaluable insights for scenario testing, while risk and compliance management ensure compliance with regulatory requirements.
This integrated solution gives you a 360° view into your operational resilience management, supporting your organization’s long-term success.
ŞekerbankNot only do we now have a clear picture of our internal processes, but we can also share them directly with business stakeholders or even regulatory agencies. Transparency. Efficiency. Better customer experience. These are just three benefits of working with ARIS.
Explore how Claro SA transformed customer experience and optimized operations with ARIS, leading to enhanced efficiency and innovation
Stay ahead of your competitors by streamlining your processes in the fast-paced business world. Unlock the key to aligning your operations with strategy with this essential guide for maximum efficiency and success.
Put a structure around your strategy. Unlock the true power of your processes with a free trial of ARIS Basic. Get started today!