In the past used predominantly to improve back-office operations and cut down on costs, third-party products and services have increasingly become mission critical – the products and services themselves covering all aspects of the modern enterprise, from information technology to finance and accounting, customer service support to human resources administration.
Indeed, these products and services and their integration into mission-critical operations do unambiguously provide competitive advantage and accelerate innovation.But high levels of dependency aren’t without risk, as recent IT outages have demonstrated. And though, spectacular third-party incidents might not happen every day; run-of-the-mill third-party risk misses do.
In a Gartner survey[i] of 100 executive risk committee members in September 2022, 84% of respondents said that third-party risk misses resulted in operations disruptions. Meanwhile, two thirds resulted in adverse financial impact. And 60% resulted in either increased regulatory scrutiny or adverse reputational impact.
One way to hedge against these risks is comprehensive dependency mapping.
What is dependency mapping?
So, what is dependency mapping?
Dependency mapping is identifying, documenting, and understanding the chain of activities involved in delivering important or critical business services.
To map dependencies comprehensively, an organization identifies, documents, and (yes) visually maps the necessary people, processes, information, technologies, facilities, and third-party service providers required to deliver each of its important or critical business services.
Benefits of dependency mapping
Why’s comprehensive dependency mapping so important to business resilience, though?
With risk (third-party and supplier risk including) becoming more prolific, heterogeneous, and complex, dependency mapping provides the very means to manage information overload, enabling organizations to identify and prioritize what matters most in a way that’s digestible.
Expounding further, comprehensive dependency mapping enables firms to meet the following outcomes:
Identify vulnerabilities
Mapping an important business service allows organizations to identify the resources that are critical to delivering an important business service, ascertain whether they are fit for purpose, and consider what would happen if resources were to become unavailable.
Test their ability to remain within impact tolerances
Mapping facilitates the testing of an organization’s ability to deliver important business services within impact tolerances. What’s more, designing and understanding the full implications of scenarios often necessitates a map of the relevant business service.
Comply with regulations
Statutes, particularly in the financial services space, often require firms to identify and document the necessary people, processes, technologies, facilities, and information required to deliver each of their important business services.
Digital technology to provide a fuller picture of relationships
Can this not be done via existing digital technology?
Yes, but.
Some of the most advanced resilience management software platforms do display prioritized activities’ dependencies, providing organizations the data they need.
Historically, though, relevant platforms have presented a somewhat narrow view of prioritized activities’ dependencies. To gain a fuller picture, users have had to navigate away from original context to other dashboards.
For instance, users have only been able to see dependent prioritized activities. They have had to navigate away from that original context, through to multiple dashboards, to be able to drill down further to identify the information they need.
Although this has been adequate, users have hankered for a more connected picture of the complex web of relationships within and outside of their organization.
Noggin brings continuity into focus, letting you visualize relationships
With Noggin, now, users can easily visualize relationships and dependencies across their organization. How can that be?
Well, Noggin has released a new relationship map feature. That feature provides the requested visual representation, one that illustrates the relationships between different objects within Noggin.
Practically speaking, Resilience teams, whether they be in Business Continuity, Operational Resilience, Third-Party or Operational Risk Management, now get a clear picture of what matters most to their organization and associated dependencies.
This functionality drastically enhances an organization’s ability to develop viable resilience strategies and make the right decisions when a business disruption occurs.
Further benefits of Noggin’s new relationship visualization feature include:
- Mitigate the risk of supply-chain disruption. Noggin’s relationship map can reveal that a key supplier is a single point of failure for a critical product line. Such insight then enables the business to seek additional suppliers or develop contingency plans, ultimately mitigating the risk of supply-chain disruption.
- Enhance decision-making. We learn with our eyes. That’s why relationship maps like Noggin’s have always been exceedingly powerful tools for visualizing and analyzing the complex web of relationships within and outside an organization. Noggin’s relationship map, in particular, has the ability to lead to better decision making, improved efficiency, and enhanced resilience.
To recap, third-party risk is on the rise. So too are associated disruptions.
Resilience teams in Business Continuity, Operational Resilience, Third-Party and Operational Risk Management have every need to comprehensively map their dependencies to gain a clear picture of what matters most to their organization.
With Noggin’s new relationship map feature, they can. The feature illustrates the relationships between different objects within Noggin, giving organizations a full, comprehensive view of their prioritized activities’ dependencies without having to click away.
Based on the insight it provides, this new Noggin map feature enhances your ability to develop viable resilience strategies to mitigate supply-chain risk, improve efficiency, and empower decision makers.
To learn more about relationship visualization with Noggin, simply request a demo and one of our helpful Solutions Experts will walk you through the functionality.
[i] Gartner: Gartner Survey Shows Third-Party Risk Management “Misses” Are Hurting Organizations. Available at https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2023-02-21-gartner-survey-shows-third-party-risk-management-misses-are-hurting-ororganizations.
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