As the global community responds to the ongoing impact of COVID-19, the ability to quickly assess an organization’s stability, and the critical functions and resources to maintain that stability, has become more important than ever. The current pandemic has plunged the world into a set of circumstances that seemed implausible just a few short weeks ago.  As this global event continues to evolve, firms must focus on implementing strategies to maintain their operations and remain resilient throughout this period.

Capco recommends that our clients develop a series of operational playbooks based on possible scenarios and implement agile governance and execution frameworks to quickly protect and pivot their operations as necessary.  How an organization comes together to protect its workforce, customers, and business strategy will define its ability to weather economic uncertainty and ultimately achieve recovery.

Capco advises and assists clients with managing continuity and achieving resiliency by working collaboratively to design and implement practical solutions for identifying critical business functions and essential resources.  We help firms optimize their workforce through resource prioritization, assessing infrastructural and technological scalability, mitigating cybersecurity vulnerabilities, and delivering robust customer communication frameworks.  We can help clients enhance their existing governance models effectively using agile program delivery to establish or bolster their current capabilities.

Our goal is to help clients through this pandemic by evolving their businesses to both mitigate disruptions and discover a path towards sustainable recovery.  While the challenges ahead may seem overwhelming, we believe that the best way to mitigate the potential risk of what’s to come is to plan ahead to the extent possible.  To that end, we’ve identified several critical components of continuity and related recommendations to help our clients.

Capco’s COVID 19 response recommendations include:

Critical Functions Identification

• Identify scenarios against macro-economic shifts from impacted industries, clients and counterparties. By identifying these scenarios, you can understand the ways your critical functions may shift and reprioritize through different periods.
• Assess each identified scenario and determine how your critical business operations will change depending on the levers of variability encompassed by each scenario.
• Define action plans in response to each identified scenario to mitigate disruptions and ensure continuity as the economic environment evolves. 

Workforce Strategy and Optimization

• Prioritize continuity of critical functions in defining interim workforce configurations based on scenarios to accommodate resource constraints.
• Define alternative work strategies and conduct resource demand evaluations to project workforce needs accurately and to ensure all essential functions remain operational.
• Enhance organizational design and the associated target operating model in a post-pandemic environment to accelerate the shift towards an optimal crisis workforce strategy and reality.

Infrastructure/Technology

• Identify opportunities to accelerate your digital self-service footprint.
• Conduct a digital readiness assessment to understand alternatives to current infrastructure.
• Plan to reallocate/augment servers by leveraging additional resources like network bandwidth, digital channels as well as offloading from low priority capabilities.
• Consider expediting cloud adoption to facilitate the transition away from physical dependencies and to deploy artificial intelligence and chatbots to enhance customer support.

Cybersecurity 

• Review operational structure to identify, prioritize, and address critical security risks.
• Remediate critical security risks to strengthen short-term cybersecurity posture.
• Invest in designing a robust target-state cyber resilience framework to ensure continuity in future crises. 

Communications

• Refresh communication plans to ensure strategic alignment with the realities of operating during a pandemic. 
• Refresh customer support tactics and update online capabilities to boost relationships with your clients.
• Consider implementing new technologies to enhance remote capabilities.

Governance, Culture and Awareness

• Expedite the creation of a BCP Board/task force to execute decisions quickly and effectively.  
• Enhance communication channels between the workforce, critical stakeholders, and third parties to ensure transparency and unity.
• Prioritize the health and safety of your workforce and clients by tracking and implementing the latest guidelines from relevant authorities.

For further details on our offering, please reach out to us at Resiliency_NA@capco.com 

To view our POV on Managing Continuity and Achieving Resiliency please click here.