Businesses, today, need a strong resilience plan as the repercussions of a single flaw in the system is much higher now. IT resilience has grown now to become a more umbrella concept, which also includes business resiliency. It comes from the marriage of IT and operations. GP Gupta, Chief Strategy Officer, SpiceJet and Jitendra Singh, President & Chief Digital Officer, JK Cement, in conversation at ETSpectrum 2022, discuss building crisis-resilient architecture and integrating operational strategies.
Key challenges enroute operational resiliency:
The pandemic educated businesses. And one challenge that plagues ecosystems across is a lack of communication, states Gupta. “No communication across people, departments and systems leads to working in silos,” he says.
“Second, the roles and responsibilities of people aren’t well defined, often with multiple overlaps. This leads to the third challenge–lack of accountability. Another challenge organizations face is no redundancies in the system. Once you hit a crisis you need more resources but there is no redundancy.”
Gupta opines that the aviation sector is far more organized as it is a zero-tolerance business. Some of the factors contributing to the organized set up would be: A regulated operation environment; well documented department manuals; each department equipped with a designated post holder with responsibilities and accountabilities well spelt.
“All the extended operating policies for business as usual, even for the uncertainties happening across the globe till date, there are SOPs to tackle them. There is huge interdependence across functions, therefore, communication channels are well spelt out,” Gupta explains.
Transformation agenda and operational resiliency at JK Cement:
Jitendra Singh states resilience isn’t by choice, it’s a necessity. So what triggered the necessary digital transformation at JK Cement? “Basic premise: Before pandemic–you need to survive, and be ahead of and better than the competition.
Today the customer is smart enough and it’s no more just buying cement, they also put extreme caution and value because it’s a once-in-a-lifetime event. Hence, connectivity with the customer is a necessity and increasing efficiency of the sales force on ground is criticalJitendra Singh, President and Chief Digital Officer, JK Cement
Singh explains that the vision statement of the company is “optimize production and marketing, employee engagement, and customer engagement. We need to be smart and agile enough to have good talent on board.”
Crisis scenarios a good crisis resilient systems should address:
Crisis may differ from organization and industry leading to disruptions. However, basic ingredients should be the same. Gupta lists the same below:
Central database and systems should be fully integrated.Rules and responsibilities should be clearly defined.There should be SOPs for all known operational risks and uncertainties.Organizations should have a clear program on anticipating business risks and disruption.There should be a clearly laid down and transparent communication channel.There should be inbuilt redundancy in the organization.GP Gupta, Chief Strategy Officer, SpiceJet
Note: The article is an extract from a panel discussion hosted at Economic Times Spectrum 2022.