White Paper: Strengthening Operational Resilience with ARIS
How to Maintain Resilience in an Uncertain World
In today’s increasingly volatile and interconnected world, businesses face unprecedented levels of uncertainty and risk. From cyber-attacks and natural disasters to system failures, disruptions pose significant challenges to maintaining business continuity. Operational resilience has emerged as a critical priority for organizations striving to thrive amidst these challenges. Achieving resilience requires more than robust response and recovery strategies—it demands compliance to a growing number of regulatory requirements.
ARIS, a comprehensive Process Intelligence and Risk & Compliance Management solution, offers a holistic approach to operational resilience. It empowers organizations to mitigate risks, recover swiftly from disruptions, and ensure compliance with evolving regulations. This white paper explores how ARIS enhances operational resilience through integrated tools that provide clarity, transparency, and efficiency.
The Need for Operational Resilience
Disruptions have grown in frequency and impact in recent years. From sophisticated cyber threats to widespread system outages, businesses face a wide range of risks. Operational resilience is the capability to prevent, respond to, and recover from such disruptions while maintaining core functions. This capability is crucial not only for survival but also for sustaining a competitive edge in an increasingly complex regulatory environment.
Organizations today face mounting pressure to comply with a web of complex and overlapping regulations. Compliance is no longer a reactive process but an ongoing responsibility. Non-compliance can result in hefty fines, reputational damage, and operational inefficiencies.
The unpredictable nature of disruptions—often arriving swiftly and without warning—amplifies the need for resilience. Events like the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and the Suez Canal blockage have underscored the vulnerability of businesses, especially when compounded by cyberattacks. Companies that fail to prepare for such events risk being pushed out of the market. Conversely, those that proactively build resilience are better positioned to adapt and thrive.
Operational resilience is more than a regulatory necessity; it is a business imperative. The past few years have exposed significant gaps in many organizations’ disruption-handling abilities. Rapid digital transformation introduces new risks, geopolitical events disrupt global supply chains, and advancements in AI bring unprecedented challenges. Governments, particularly for the financial services sector, are tightening regulations, making operational resilience indispensable for staying competitive and compliant.
The Impact of Disruptions
The repercussions of disruptions have been particularly severe for the financial services sector. For instance:
- In 2021, 50% of all banks were targeted by at least one successful cyber-attack (ECB).
- In 2023, 29% of organizations reported being materially affected by cyber incidents, with 41% of these incidents attributed to third-party providers, emphasizing the broader ecosystem’s vulnerability (WEF).
- The frequency of cyber-attacks surged by 38% in 2022 (Bank of England, quoted by Infosecurity Magazine), further amplifying the risks.
These figures underscore the critical importance of operational resilience in safeguarding organizations from both immediate and long-term damage.
The Ten Myths of Operational Resilience
Operational resilience is a cornerstone of modern organizational strategy, yet it is often misunderstood. Common myths can lead to fragmented efforts, missed opportunities, and vulnerabilities. Below, we address ten common myths about operational resilience, and why it must be a comprehensive, ongoing priority for every organization.
- Myth: Operational resilience is a one-time project.
Reality: Resilience is an ongoing, integrated practice that requires sustained effort across the entire organization. It’s not something you “start over” with each new regulation. - Myth: Regulatory compliance guarantees resilience.
Reality: Relying solely on tools like Excel or specialized platforms to meet compliance often overlooks the bigger picture. True resilience requires a holistic approach that integrates IT, processes, people, data, risk, and third-party relationships. - Myth: Business continuity is enough to achieve operational resilience.
Reality: While business continuity is important, resilience encompasses prevention, response, and adaptation to unforeseen disruptions—not just recovery from them. - Myth: Resilience is only necessary if mandated.
Reality: Even without regulatory requirements, operational resilience is crucial for any organization’s long-term survival and adaptability. - Myth: Each regulation should be addressed separately.
Reality: Tackling regulations in isolation leads to inefficiencies and technical debt. An integrated, enterprise-wide approach prevents inefficiencies and builds a more robust operating model. - Myth: Quick fixes or point solutions will make an organization resilient.
Reality: Short-term “quick win” solutions often create technical debt and limit long-term resilience. A sustainable strategy is needed to build resilience in the organization’s core operations. - Myth: Operational resilience is purely a technical issue.
Reality: It involves much more than just IT. True resilience requires collaboration across departments, including people, processes, and risk management, to create a coordinated response to disruptions. - Myth: Silos don’t impact resilience efforts.
Reality: When information and resources are siloed, it becomes harder to respond effectively to disruptions. A cohesive approach across departments ensures a faster, more unified response to incidents. - Myth: Only financial services need to focus on operational resilience.
Reality: While financial services must adhere to strict regulations, all industries face risks—from cyber threats to supply chain issues or geopolitical events. - Myth: AI and digital transformation reduce the need for resilience.
Reality: Emerging technologies related to digital transformation like AI tools introduce new vulnerabilities that must be managed proactively.
ARIS: A Holistic Solution for Operational Resilience
ARIS offers an integrated platform that combines Business Process Analysis, Process Mining, Risk and Compliance Management, and Automation as a single solution. It provides unmatched visibility into how processes are executed, identifying vulnerabilities, and enabling businesses to take proactive steps to ensure resilience.
With ARIS, you can:
- Gain a comprehensive end-to-end view of your operations: ARIS maps the relationships between IT, processes, people, data, and third-party interactions. This holistic view helps you understand the impact of disruptions on your operating model.
- Measure real-world process execution: Using Process Mining, ARIS provides insights into how processes function in practice. This valuable data helps you make informed decisions to enhance resilience.
- Transition from disparate tools to a unified platform: Many businesses rely on tools like Excel, PowerPoint, or BI software to manage regulatory compliance. ARIS consolidates these functions into a single platform, streamlining processes and reducing inefficiencies caused by using multiple tools.
ARIS serves as the backbone of operational resilience. It not only ensures continuous compliance but also enhances organizational agility in responding to evolving threats and regulations.
The components and their relationships can be visualized in the following graphic.
Strategy and planning
During the strategy and planning phase, organizations define stakeholders and objectives, identify important business services, and establish impact tolerances. Begin by understanding stakeholders, assessing the value and risks your actions bring them, and shaping your goals accordingly. Next, identify critical business services that fulfill stakeholders’ needs, prioritizing those whose failure could cause significant disruptions. Finally, set impact tolerances, such as acceptable downtime for essential services like internet banking, to maintain trust and satisfaction.
Regulatory Management
Regulatory Management ensures your company remains compliant by maintaining control over all relevant regulations. Mapping regulatory requirements to your business landscape creates transparency, enabling a clear understanding of how regulatory issues could impact your operations. Implement a reliable internal control system (ICS) with regular control tests and audit-proof documentation to satisfy both external and internal auditors, ensuring compliance with regulations and internal policies.
Scenario Testing
Scenario testing, learning, and monitoring are critical for building resilience in key business services. Simulate disruptive events—like natural disasters or pandemics—that could impact resource delivery. Evaluate the outcomes and assess your ability to meet impact tolerances, focusing on improving resilience by prioritizing prevention over reaction. Continuous monitoring and reporting are equally vital. Leverage technologies like process mining, automation, and dashboards to track operations, and where possible, automate the detection, documentation, and resolution of issues, incidents, and controls for greater efficiency.
Risk & Compliance Management
Effective Risk and Compliance Management includes identifying, assessing, and mitigating risks to minimize their impact and likelihood. Operational resilience requires managing all risks and related assets, including compliance risks. Establishing appropriate controls and conducting regular control tests creates a solid foundation within your internal control system (ICS). Without effective controls, your organization is vulnerable to fraud, misconduct, financial loss, and significant legal consequences.
Business Continuity
Business Continuity ensures your organization can continue delivering essential products and services following a disruption. 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.
Application Landscape
The application landscape encompasses the systems, policies, and technologies that protect business operations from threats. By aligning business strategy and risk tolerance, it provides guidance through reference architectures, operating model blueprints, standard security patterns, and foundational policies and principles for solution architects.
Service Provider Management
Service Provider Management oversees and coordinates third-party service providers to ensure they meet organizational requirements and standards. This function is crucial for operational resilience because it ensures that third-party services essential to your organization are reliable, secure, and capable of maintaining continuity during disruptions. End-to-end visibility into your third-party activities helps identify critical points where disruptions could occur. This gives you a clearer understanding of how third-party dependencies impact your operations.
Business Execution
Business execution involves effectively implementing strategies, plans, and processes to achieve organizational goals and objectives. It ensures that resources—including people, technology, and capital—are aligned and used efficiently. This process includes coordinating activities, monitoring performance, and adapting to challenges or changes to drive results and deliver value to stakeholders.
Operating model optimization
At the center of operational resilience architecture is the operating model optimization. This part ensures continuous exchange of data with all other elements, enabling ongoing adaptation and optimization.
Processes and procedure instructions are the workflows that ensure the seamless operation of Important Business Services (IBSs)—core services whose disruption could jeopardize an organization’s stability, even its entire operations. Examples include payment processing, customer support, and critical infrastructure. Mapping supporting processes to IBSs helps identify those processes that are crucial for their effective delivery. Additionally, critical resources—such as technology, people, processes, facilities, information, and third parties—are indispensable for maintaining operations during disruptions.
Key Capabilities of ARIS for Operational Resilience
ARIS empowers organizations to manage resilience and compliance with the following key benefits:
- Holistic Operating Model: ARIS integrates all aspects of an organization’s operations—including IT, processes, people, risk, and third-party relationships—providing a complete view of the business and its resilience capabilities.
- Process Mining for Insights: ARIS Process Mining reveals real-world process execution, offering deep insights into inefficiencies and areas for improvement. This data-driven approach enhances decision-making and accelerates response times.
- Streamlined Regulatory Management: ARIS consolidates compliance efforts into a single platform, streamlining the management of regulations across geographies and industries. By linking regulatory requirements to business processes, assets, and teams, ARIS embeds compliance into the operational framework. It ensures regular testing, audit-proof documentation, and continuous improvement of compliance controls through efficient issue management workflows.
- Centralized Repository: A single repository within ARIS facilitates the documentation, analysis, testing, and reporting needed to maintain regulatory compliance and operational resilience. It transparently outlines all interdependencies and critical resources, allowing for the identification of essential services and assets which helps organizations anticipate and reduce the impact of incidents.
- Incident and Recovery Management: By reducing the number of incidents and minimizing recovery times, ARIS lowers the costs associated with disruptions and ensures faster restoration of critical operations.
- Integrated Risk Management ARIS offers seamless integration of risk management into business processes, allowing organizations to proactively assess and manage risks. This includes building a risk inventory and managing operational and compliance risks through automated workflows that streamline issue management and improve future risk assessments.
- Reporting and Analytics ARIS provides robust reporting and analytics capabilities that allow organizations to continuously monitor and improve operational resilience. Custom dashboards and comprehensive reports offer transparency for internal teams, management, and external auditors, ensuring ongoing success.
ARIS in Action: Real-World Impact
Organizations worldwide trust ARIS. Companies like OeKB Group, Suva, and Sekerbank have leveraged ARIS to improve transparency, streamline processes, and enhance customer experiences.
OeKB Group’s Senior Manager, Regina Janitsch, attests: “In short: ARIS is easy to use, secure, and absolutely transparent.”
Similarly, Suva’s IT Architect André Kunz highlights its effectiveness, sharing: “It’s extremely important that we have the right software enabling us to achieve long-term transparency and customer focus. ARIS makes this possible.”
Conclusion
Operational resilience is no longer optional; it is a necessity for businesses operating in an unpredictable world. With ARIS, you can build a robust foundation for resilience and ensure you are prepared for disruptions while also maintaining compliance with ever-evolving regulations. ARIS’s comprehensive and integrated approach provides you with a unified solution that supports business continuity, reduces risks, and enhances decision-making. By adopting ARIS, you can safeguard your future and remain competitive in a rapidly changing world.