The Client and Its Challenge
A family-owned, multi-billion-dollar corporation with companies in a wide range of consumer-related industries had only informal plans to protect its operations, people, and assets in the event of an emergency or disaster. Given its widespread operations, senior management recognized the importance of having a comprehensive business continuity plan in place. A leader in a diverse array of fields, the organization has a number of supply chains, operation locations, and thousands of employees. It faced the challenge of creating and implementing a comprehensive business continuity, emergency response, and crisis management plan to protect its people and assets in an environment where only localized plans, at best, had thus far existed.

The Risk Consulting Solution
Marsh believes that understanding the impact of risks is key to developing and implementing an effective business continuity plan. Consequently, a team of consultants from Marsh’s Business Continuity Planning (BCP) and Risk-Adjusted Supply Chain Management practices began by creating a preparedness tool to assess the client’s vulnerabilities to a severe disruption. Rather than evaluating the client’s level of preparedness in silos, the consultants took a holistic approach of analysis. Over the course of three days, our consultants interviewed more than twenty employees from all segments of the business ranging from senior to departmental management.

By interviewing a range of employees, the team was able to identify enterprise-wide risks and their potential impact to the company. To quantify the organization’s overall level of preparedness, the consultants evaluated the client’s existing business continuity plan on a 0-100 scale, 100 being well prepared. Overall, the client scored a 27.9, thereby validating that the organization’s current level of preparedness would inadequately protect it in the event of a severe business disruption. In addition, the team’s Business Continuity Preparedness Tool that resides on the TrendTracker software platform benchmarked the client against industry, regulatory, and best practices.

Results
After identifying and quantifying potential risks, the team developed a recovery strategy to prepare the client for business disruptions. To manage and mitigate risks in the short and long terms, the team created a business continuity plan to be rolled out according to the client’s budgeting schedule. In so doing, the consultants were able to create a cost-effective plan that will enable the organization to protect its employees and assets and resume operations efficiently in the event of a severe disruption, crisis, or emergency.

The most senior levels of the company endorsed the findings and recommendations and implemented the proposed business continuity plan in one department for a trial period. Three to four months long, the trial enables the consultants to work with the client to further customize and refine the business continuity, emergency response, and crisis management plans. Already proving to be effective in the trial, the client is planning to rollout the preparedness strategy to all segments of the organization.