All businesses need to be reliable. But how do we get there?
When we started writing this four-part blog series (See our previous blogs on Clarity & Agility), our aim was to explore responses to the requirements that the Statement of Policy on Operational Resilience is putting on the banking and financial sector in the UK.
However, as we found ourselves discussing the four aspects of resiliency (Clarity, Agility, Reliability, Simplicity) with colleagues, clients, and peers, we realized that with the third of these points – reliability - we were entering a territory that should be “a given”. How can a business not be reliable or not have reliability built within its fabric?
Reliability is where technology and business operations meet and work together to deliver common goals. It is a key pillar of digital transformation projects. For example, IT executives and operational leaders have to come together if they want a successful end result.
Reliability plays a key role in ensuring systems – whether current or those not yet deployed – are built in such a way that the business can continue to operate as much as possible if the systems degrade... If the systems fail completely, then firms need to have processes in place to resolve the failures quickly. Reliability is therefore closely intertwined with agility. Together they ensure the business has the flexibility to anticipate, respond and adapt to irregularities.
Issues arise when business and tech resiliency are not aligned when these aspects are handled separately. Without this alignment, the IT department cannot prioritize spending time and budget on the systems that are most critical to the business.
“Crises are opportunities for change” and over the last 12-24 months we have certainly seen firms changing, transforming, and adapting their business models to be more resilient to the new state of play.
According to an Accenture study, “companies armed with operating models that enable them to continuously adapt are more likely to prosper”, citing that 93% of executives surveyed think “their very existence is jeopardized by operating models that can’t keep pace”. Failure to have an adaptable operating model is likely to result in business failure.
However, the same survey reports that 74% of respondents feel they will need to completely rethink their operating models to be more resilient as a result of COVID-19.
We say it is time for firms to move. This is what has led us to view reliability as part of a company’s DNA and its key values. Technology should be an enabler for driving alignment between strategy and execution as part of a company culture that is customer-centric to its core and focused on delivering technology innovation that will further accelerate our customers' success.
Reliability is an orchestrated exercise and technology enables multiple teams to act as one to orchestrate resiliency and reliability across lines of business.