Why did we get shortlisted for an award?
We were thrilled to have been shortlisted a few weeks ago for Consultancy of the Year and Specialist Company of the Year for our work in the Wholesale Broking and Payment Services sectors on Operational Resilience. We are being considered for these awards based on our innovative approach to resource mapping and business process modelling, which can also be applied across the Financial Services ecosystem and outside financial services.
Shortlist 2023 // Business Continuity Awards
A little more detail
The submissions for these awards were centred around one of the key elements of Operational Resilience – that of the end-to-end mapping of the Important Business Services, identifying each process involved, together with the associated resources used, namely people, technology, facilities, and information. We understand that in many cases, firms have utilised existing tools such as Visio or Excel to capture the data. Whilst this does meet the basis of the requirement, this approach can become very difficult and time consuming to maintain and adds little or no added benefits for all the work involved.
For example, using a fit-for-purpose tool for business process mapping that can be integrated with golden source data for technical asset inventory/CMDB and third party supplier data is something that can bring real business value. This enables, for example, pro-active management of contracts that auto-renew if not managed closely and, when there is a real business disruption event, the response management teams can quickly assess exactly which technology (or other) resources are needed to deliver a service and can have an objective data-led discussion as to drive recovery and communications priorities.
We look to develop solutions that will add business value
Shapes First always looks to develop solutions for our clients that not only meet the needs of a given regulation or requirement, but that also enable effective integration into the landscape, are easy to maintain and add business value. This approach is something we regard as important to our brand, and we work with our clients to deliver appropriate solutions in a tangible way. By tailoring a tool to meet the end-to-end mapping requirements of Operational Resilience we enable our clients to achieve benefits over and above the regulatory compliance box tick.
What did we do in practice?
We partnered with our clients to tailor our Operational Resilience method to be appropriate and proportionate for their businesses, and oversaw delivery of programmes to achieve implementation of the recent Operational Resilience regulation. This included the identification of Important Business Services, setting impact tolerances, mapping of resource dependencies, scenario testing and self-assessment reporting.
We proposed a comprehensive and easily maintainable solution and delivered the resource mapping requirements using a platform (rather than Excel or Visio) to accelerate the mapping activity. The significant data recorded not only evidences compliance with the regulatory requirements, but importantly enabled the clients to achieve a less-siloed visualisation of their business services. We worked with the firms to identify additional benefits from creating a digital representation of their business services, enabling them to leverage their investment in the regulatory change initiatives and reduce the cost of ownership of the technology platform.
Next steps
Whether you’ve chosen your Operational Resilience partner or not, talk to us about how we can help you with the resource mapping requirements. We use software that is fit-for-purpose, and apply standards that ensure that you get a repeatable process. Our method and approach are equally appropriate for large 10k plus person organisations, and smaller firms with less than 200 people. You really have nothing to lose from a conversation - get in touch.
