Business Continuity: preparing for the operational risks of coronavirus

With the Covid-19 (coronavirus) situation changing daily, businesses are being reminded to review their business continuity plans and ensure these are flexible enough to address a range of possible effects from the pandemic. As lockdowns and quarantine measures become more common, working from home is being promoted by many as a way to slow the spread of the disease, with some claims that it can even boost productivity.

Remote working may be a popular strategy to combat the risk of coronavirus, but it does raise its own challenges and operational risks. This is why it is important to have business continuity plans in place. Especially as businesses that don’t encourage remote working may still soon find themselves in a situation that demands it.

One of the key pieces of the puzzle is ensuring that your team can continue to work collaboratively; for example that logistics teams are aware of which shipments need to be processed and that traders remain compliant with risk management policies.

A crucial way to support this collaboration across departments, and the smooth running of the business during disruptions, is to ensure your technology solution supports remote working. CTRM systems that provide a web-based UI and secure login for remote workers are only the bare minimum and can still lead to increased operational risks that need to be planned for.

For example, consider your document storage technology; often key documents and templates are stored on local machines or shared drives, which it may not be possible to access from offsite depending on your IT infrastructure. And some organisations restrict the use of the most popular document sharing platforms, so be sure to check these policies when assessing your business continuity plan.

Helping our clients move with minimal disruption

At Gen10, we have long promoted the idea of collaboration through technology and believe that our collaborative commodity management technology can support our clients to continue as effectively as ever during periods of disruption or remote working. Gen10’s cloud-native apps are designed to be used anywhere our clients have access to the Internet (and for some apps even without Internet access), and across devices including tablets or iPads, so that your people can pick up right where they left off in the office.

For example, Gen10’s Daily Business Report gives C-level and senior managers of large groups insights into each of their global operations from anywhere in the world. The report uses Gen10’s Excel API tool to deliver information in a simple and readily-available format that shows the daily sales and purchases, total contract quantity and margin value for each company without even needing to log in to the app. With reports like this, senior managers have a unique insight into their operations at all times, wherever they are and without the need to contact other individuals for information.

And collaboration across teams and locations has been a core offering of Gen10’s CommOS since its inception, providing all system users with the information they need to do their job better and faster from any location, in a controlled, secure system.

The automated workflows that accelerate business processes under normal conditions support remote working as they do not rely on knowing which colleagues are available, and mean that tasks don’t sit neglected in an individual’s inbox if they are unable to work. The transparency that comes with Gen10 apps and workflows is another advantage as the audit trail means that it is always clear which actions are outstanding for a deal and who is overseeing them.

CommOS apps also include comprehensive document management. Documents can be uploaded against contracts, shipments or invoices and securely viewed or used by any colleagues who need them.

These collaborative technologies have proven effective in helping our clients operate efficiently across global offices for many years and are now supporting our clients further as they maintain business as usual from more remote locations.

As a technology company, at Gen10 we are lucky to have the systems and processes in place to allow our team to work remotely, including using a custom app within CommOS to manage our service desk and development. As we were already using this CommOS app, the move to remote working was particularly straightforward, with all preparations completed within one afternoon and not impacting on services to our clients. We are now working 100% remotely, both to protect our team and their families and to ensure that our clients are not affected by an outbreak in our offices.

We urge all organisations to consider their business continuity plans in light of Covid-19 to minimise the operational risk this pandemic is causing and protect their people and their families.