More businesses to get serious with 'resiliency planning', says Ericsson

As unforeseeable events such as the energy crisis, pandemic, war and global conflict are creating many challenges to businesses in recent years, a new report shows that four times as many decision-makers and employees agree (from pre-pandemic times) that preparedness toward long-term resiliency is critical.

The report released by Swedish network equipment maker Ericsson titled: Future of Enterprises report, 42% of decision-makers currently believe that they will face disruptions to their enterprise in the near future due to natural disasters caused by climate change. And while they recognise preparedness is critical, there is a need to move from reactive strategies toward resiliency planning, shifting away from recovery-oriented resilience, as they foresee more frequent and severe disruptive events to happen in the future.. 

Resilience is a term that commonly refers to the ability to bounce back and return to a previous state after a disturbance. In the context of enterprises, the term describes the ability to maintain core capabilities, identity and structure, and the capacity for agile transformation. For an enterprise to be resilient, it thus needs to be capable of handling systemic disruptions that can be random, accidental, or even intentional. 

That said, the report also noted that companies are taking resiliency planning seriously – 49% of decision-makers say their company has a well-defined strategy to handle disruptive events and among employees, almost eight times more say they are prepared than not. That preparation is being driven by digitalization and automation, as 90% of companies that have well-defined resilience strategies in place have been shown to be investing heavily in these areas. 

However, it is important to recognize the value in proactive rather than reactive resilience, something that may not be a part of many enterprises' strategies. In essence, more work needs to be done given the current climate, said the report. 

“Our world has become increasingly complex and the time to adopt resiliency strategies is now. It has never been more paramount for enterprises if they hope to remain competitive and sustainable in the long term. Although many companies have strategies in place already, this report highlights the apparent need for a shift from short-term redundancy-based resilience to a long-term efficiency-based strategy,” said Patrik Hedlund, Senior Researcher, Ericsson Consumer and Industry Lab at Ericsson. 

Through the development of a more proactive resilience strategy, even more can be done to mitigate potential disruptions by providing warning signs ahead of disruptive events and understanding the full potential impact. In fact, six out of 10 decision-makers believe that AI-based services and VR resilience training implemented following disruptive events were the key in handling future disruptions, highlighting the need to look at past trends in building future resiliency. 

According to the report’s findings, innovation, data-driven decision making, agile and lean, digitisation and automation, pro-active risk management, a skilled workforce, and environmental sustainability are key parameters to decide how resilient the company can be. 

In recent times, there have been several other reports emphasising on business resiliency in the face of crisis.  

Data platform and security company Splunk, in collaboration with the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), in a recent report released this month suggested that the most data-savvy companies are increasing profits by 9.5%, are 2.9 times more likely to beat the competition to market, and are twice as likely to exceed financial expectations. 

"Organizations that prioritize investments in collecting and using their data have full visibility into their digital systems and business performance, which makes it easier to adapt and respond to disruptions, security threats and changing market conditions,” it said.

Analyst firm Gartner too, mentioned in its blog that businesses need to take a dynamic approach to reskilling, find talent that generates business impact, adopt agile principles into business projects and operating models and redesign work to enable employees to be more responsive.