Five points for effective crisis management

The demands on companies' emergency and crisis management have become more stringent. This is especially true if they operate internationally and employ people in countries that may experience extreme weather or political instability. This creates risks and hazards that require immediate responses in the event of an emergency. On the other hand, IT failures or supply chain interruptions are now quickly felt by customers due to increasingly tightly timed business processes.

Automate implementation of measures

The be-all and end-all for responding correctly to critical events is still the clean definition of response measures in emergency plans. However, in order to react quickly enough, it is essential to automate the implementation of these measures. Everbridge, a specialist in critical event management, explains how this can be achieved.

1. create a central data hub

Companies should collect all information relevant for crisis situations and emergencies in a central platform. Data from a wide variety of sources flows into this, such as information from IoT devices for building security, from applications for monitoring IT systems, or data on the whereabouts of employees. But it also includes publicly available sources such as police channels in social media, traffic information or severe weather warnings.

2. merge and visualize data 

In order to use this information to immediately identify critical events and their effects on the company's own assets, the data must be brought together and displayed graphically in a clear manner. For example, the responsible teams should be able to display a crisis hotspot on a world map in their control center in near real time and zoom into the affected location. They can then immediately see which buildings are located there or which employees are currently there.

3. automate workflows and use templates

The processes defined in the emergency plans are ideally automated by a workflow system. The use of prepared templates is recommended. If the workflow systems use prepared messages to employees or customers in different languages, for example, companies save valuable time. If these messages are only set up in the event of an emergency, this not only takes too long, but there is also a risk that errors will occur due to the pressure situation.

4. communicate bi-directionally across multiple channels

Communication to warn those affected and to inform potential helpers should also be automated. In order to ensure the greatest possible accessibility, they are best contacted via several channels - whether SMS, e-mail or voice message. It is important that communication is bi-directional. Feedback, or the absence of it, lets the crisis teams know who is safe or whether they need to initiate the next escalation stage. In addition, the communication system should ideally be able to scale quickly if necessary - for example, if a large number of employees or customers need to be notified at short notice.

5. also cover unforeseeable cases

When companies draw up their emergency plans, it is impossible for them to cover all potential cases. There is always the risk that unforeseeable events will occur or that crisis situations will deviate from the anticipated circumstances in individual aspects. In order to react as quickly as possible in such cases, those responsible need a virtual room for crisis meetings. There, they should have the opportunity to join forces, exchange ideas, initiate measures and track their implementation, regardless of their location.

No isolated solutions

"Many companies still rely on isolated solutions for emergency warning and crisis management and struggle with information silos. This fails to achieve the required speed of response to critical events," says Andreas Junck of Everbridge. "Crisis teams need an integrated critical event management platform that provides them with a holistic enterprise-wide view and supports all operations end-to-end without media disruption."

Source: www.pr-com.de/everbridge