Six Essentials You Must Have in Your Crisis & Critical Issues Management Software

Six Essentials You Must Have in Your Crisis & Critical Issues Management Software

When it comes to crisis, it’s a matter of when not if. Research attests that companies can expect some form of value-destroying crisis at least twice a decade. And those events cost dearly. According to an internal Deloitte study, crisis-struck companies in the U.S. lost $350 billion in market valuation and $45 billion in resulting losses, fines, and penalties over a period of two short years. The financial stakes alone underscore the need for adopting corporate crisis management technologies to help crisis teams and senior stakeholders increase organizational resilience in the face of the unexpected.

Fortunately, many companies do prepare for crisis. They either have a crisis system or know they need one. The challenge though, for even the most mature crisis teams, is that not all crisis is created equal. And therefore, the tools and technologies that many companies use to handle crisis are often inadequate. Even advanced, but desktop-only, crisis management software would prove ultimately futile in the face of a corporate crisis event, which often occurs when people are not at their computers.

Instead, what’s required is a flexible corporate crisis management solution to help teams cope with every stage of the crisis lifecycle, as well as tackle lower-level critical issues before they bubble over into crisis. When considering a corporate crisis management app, that solution should offer these six essential benefits:

Logs you in from anywhere

Technology has been migrating to the cloud for some time now. And crisis management software is no different, with next-gen, cloudbased solutions providing increased efficiency, security, and (perhaps, most importantly) accessibility. Particularly salient in this era of BYOD, a mobile-friendly, crisis management app will help give your stakeholders instant access to relevant crisis management information and documentation, in any place, at any time, and on the most popular operating systems (iOS and Android). In this way, you distribute information on smartphones and tablets, rather than just keeping it on a desktop client, which can be difficult to access in the event of an emergency.

But remember: users like both mobile and desktop. So make sure the app’s UX is consistent across platforms. Your solution needs to be easy and intuitive to use, because there’s nothing like clunky software in the middle of a crisis.

Enhances situational awareness

In search of a key culprit of crisis? Look no further than lack of situational awareness. A military concept in origin, situational awareness refers to one’s ability to observe what’s going on in their surroundings, orient themselves to a given situation, and then assess unfolding events in context.

Your corporate crisis management solution should be able to help by providing teams with a single integrated system capable of tackling critical issues and crises in real time. That flexible system should also include chat, impact, assessment, communication, and planning functionality that enable you to provide updates and alerts to employees, increasing their situational awareness during a crisis. Having that single source of truth and integrated functionality helps teams de-escalate critical issues before they become crises, improves decision making during crisis, and encourages an efficient return to the status quo ante.

Secure sensitive information.

From emails to phone numbers to physical addresses, you’ll likely be putting a lot of sensitive user information in your crisis management system – data you don’t want leaked or hacked, which can cause a crisis event in and of itself. Choose a secure crisis management app to protect data when mobile. Also, ensure that the underlying system is itself secure. Verify that your crisis management software vendor is complying with prevailing standards, like the Common Criteria for Information Security Evaluation, an international standard for certification

Enables quick collaboration and keeps teams on message.

Companies that don’t (or can’t) effectively communicate critical information during a crisis risk having someone else fill in the narrative gaps – often with an unfavorable story. Your crisis management software needs to let you communicate and follow-up with your teams quickly within the app itself. That way your team doesn’t need to download any more collaboration or chat software than it needs to already. By the way, most of those free chat services aren’t secure anyway. At the end of the day, moving your privileged communications onto secure channels not only keeps them away from prying eyes, but also helps keep your teams on message, with constant access to the right information during a crisis.

Helps efficiently manage teams, set tasks, and assign roles

Dealing with crisis and critical issues takes a team. So make sure your crisis management solution lets you manage that team efficiently, by giving you the capability to set up teams outline specific roles, as well as initiate plans and track statuses to completion.

Ensuring that your team members are assigned to the correct roles and having back-up teams in place eases some of the worry when crisis does occur. In addition, integrated task management helps you de-escalate issues quickly before they even become crises.

Monitors what people are saying.

Often, the tangible fiscal and physical costs of crisis mask the more severe (and potentially longer-standing) reputational hit companies take. As crisis unfurls, it’s critical to know what people are saying, before a few, isolated voices on Twitter becomes a howling mob on national TV. Your crisis management software should keep you aware of the public response your crisis is engendering, especially on social media. The way you can effectively shape the narrative and safeguard your brand's reputation.

Even companies with the most sophisticated crisis management plans risk failure if their supporting crisis management software isn’t agile or flexible enough to cope with a full-bore crisis. That’s because the right crisis management technology can exponentially increase your level of preparedness, by drastically improving your ability to react to and recover from crisis. So when considering crisis management software, look for a secure, mobile-accessible solution that enables you to easily communicate between stakeholders, monitor public response, and ultimately enhance situational awareness across your organization. When done well, crisis and critical issues management will be the key to returning your operations to normal as soon as possible as well as improving business continuity effectiveness and securing a competitive advantage in your market.

Need to bolster your crisis and critical issues management program with the right crisis management solution? Noggin Crisis is the nextgeneration crisis and critical issues management software application for teams and executives.

Citations

i     Federal The Wall Street Journal: Crisis Management: Preparing for the Next Big Event. Available at http://deloitte.wsj.com/cio/2014/10/28/crisismanagement-preparing-for-the-nextbig-event/.

ii     To learn more about security considerations for cloud-based applications, read this discussion paper.