Only a year ago who would have believed, as we built our business continuity plans and considered disaster recovery scenarios, that something as all encompassing as the current Covid pandemic would occur.
The pandemic, and the VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) that ensued has forced new ways of working, new delivery channels and enterprises have face new evolving challenges in time frames that had previously seemed impossible.
Analyst firm Gartner define Operational Resilience as:
“a set of techniques that allow people, processes and informational systems to adapt to changing patterns. It is the ability to alter operations in the face of changing business conditions. Operationally resilient enterprises have the organizational competencies to ramp up or slow down operations in a way that provides a competitive edge and enables quick and local process modification.” *
Even businesses who had seen themselves as “Operationally Resilient” faced dealing with unexpected work from home employees, quality control issues and poor technology solutions. The need to ensure the quality and consistency of content and information delivered from a workforce that was rapidly recruited whilst managing a backlog of calls from customers who had previously not needed to interact with the contact centre or back office channel pushed the boundaries of Operational Resilience.
* https://www.gartner.com/en/information-technology/glossary/operational-resilience