Today’s business leaders understand the potentially catastrophic consequences of disruption – particularly for an organisation that isn’t adequately prepared. And although not every shock unravels into crisis, the threats are legion: geopolitical shifts, economic uncertainty, climate change, cybercrime – the term “permacrisis” no longer sounds hyperbolic.
In this ever-changing landscape, organisations that are prepared with an integrated resilience programme are less likely to fall victim to serious harm.
Two-thirds of organisations are working to establish an integrated resilience programme – but only one in five is fully integrated.
Welcome to PwC’s GCCR from co-leaders Dave Stainback (US) and Bobbie Ramsden-Knowles (UK)
89% of business leaders recognise organisational resilience as an important strategic priority.
As the world becomes more complex and connected, the threat of crisis looms more ominously. Economic turmoil, geopolitical upheaval and climate change-fueled disruption are ever-present. Cybercrime is becoming more common – and the bad actors’ tools more sophisticated. These are just a few examples among many.
The bottom line is that a crisis can strike anywhere, anytime, for a myriad of reasons. The common denominator business leaders must face in today’s era of permacrisis is the potential for a disruption – and the havoc it can bring:
Cause enterprise-wide damage
Disrupt business operations
Harm reputations
All of which can be catastrophic – to your brand, your people and your bottom line.
How your organisation prepares for disruption is one of the keys to building resilience. And the same goes for your response and recovery plans: The entire cycle is at the core of your potential to weather a crisis – even an unforeseen event. With the right tools, your organisation can build the resilience you need to make it through a disruption and to thrive.
76% of organisations’ most serious crisis disrupted critical business processes and services.
With the right tools and strategies, your organisation has the ability to overcome any type of threat – whether a catastrophic data breach, a corporate scandal, a climate-related disaster or a supply chain emergency with the potential to derail operations.
Our Global Crisis and Resilience Centre team, comprising thousands of professionals around the world, provides support at every level: from evaluating your current crisis capabilities to helping you fully integrate enterprise resilience into your business strategy.
It’s not a matter of whether a crisis will hit. It’s a matter of when.
From our work helping hundreds of clients build resilience and thrive, PwC has learned that the way business leaders prepare for disruption can determine how well they recover. And ultimately, that guides their ability to emerge stronger as a resilient enterprise.
In 2019, 95% of the business leaders who responded to our PwC Global Crisis Survey told us they expected to experience a crisis in the next two years. Then the pandemic hit, spreading across the globe, disrupting health and business in ways the world hadn’t witnessed in a century.
Four years later, 3 in 5 of respondents to our Global Crisis and Resilience Survey 2023 revealed that they are concerned about facing operational disruptions in the coming two years.
Are you among them?
Organisations that take swift control in a crisis situation by mobilising a response plan, stabilising business operations and strategising for the future are able to weather the storm.
Equip your organisation with a cohesive response by integrating core resilience competencies – business continuity, disaster recovery, incident management, physical security, threat intelligence and emergency response.
The days of silos and compartmentalised functions are gone. Instead, when a significant event occurs, your teams, technologies and processes are aligned and integrated – giving you two key benefits:
A consistent, enterprise-wide view of events and their significance
The ability to launch a coordinated, cohesive response to the crisis
It's not a matter of whether a crisis will hit. It's a matter of when.
In 2019, 95% of respondents to our Global Crisis Survey told us they expected to experience a crisis in the next two years.
Then COVID-19 emerged, spreading across the globe, disrupting health and business in a way the world has not seen in a century.
PwC has learned from multiple crises that the way business leaders prepare and respond to disruptive events can determine how well they recover and, ultimately, their ability to emerge stronger as a resilience organisation.
It's important for companies to take swift control of the crisis by mobilising a crisis response plan, stabilising business operations, and strategising for the future. PwC's Global Centre for Crisis and Resilience (GCCR) can support you through these critical waves of response and assemble multidisciplinary specialists across the PwC network to help you emerge stronger.
96% of organisations have experienced a crisis in the past two years.
Having a crisis plan is one thing, but to build and maintain preparedness, an integrated crisis management program is essential. Treating crisis management as a program — rather than just an occasional response to one-off incidents — puts you ahead of the curve when something goes wrong. Tailored for your culture and organisation, our approach also elevates your team’s awareness of risk and potential impacts to your brand. Establishing, communicating, and practicing an enterprise-wide response program helps organisations navigate crisis with confidence.
When a crisis hits, there is no substitute for muscle memory. PwC’s 2019 Global Crisis Survey revealed, by a 2-to-1 margin, that organisations with a crisis response plan fared better post-crisis than those without. A crisis response plan is the foundation of an effective crisis management program: It provides structure and guidance to face the challenges of a significant unplanned event. We customise our approach to meet your expectations, needs, operating environment, and culture.
In high-stress situations, people tend to revert to their lowest confidence threshold — which means that no matter how good your crisis plan is, it can prove ineffective if your team isn’t comfortable with their roles and responsibilities. Organisations that emerge stronger from a crisis invest time and effort to prepare their teams. By helping each responder understand their role and create plans for each potential scenario, our approach results in a more cohesive, confident response.
Crisis exercises are powerful tools that build confidence in response capabilities and, according to PwC’s 2019 Global Crisis Survey, help organisations manage crises more effectively. Applying our approach, your team practices appropriate responses to various scenarios. In tabletop exercises, crisis responders participate in a timed simulation that helps to evaluate information collection, decision-making, prioritisation, brand implications, and other response challenges — in a setting that mimics the time pressures and information constraints of a real crisis. An added benefit: Your company tests cross-functional coordination among stakeholder groups and identifies areas for improvement.
In a crisis, companies instinctively go into a reactive state: Whatever comes at you, you try to swat away. But playing defense doesn’t set you up to emerge stronger. Ready Command, PwC’s integrated crisis command centre, can help your organisation execute a methodical, strategic response, beginning on day one with the implementation of a clear governance structure. As you navigate the crisis, we continuously monitor and assess progress, recommending adjustments accordingly. Ready Command provides the foundation for you to prioritise and address each challenge — and emerge stronger.
In PwC’s 2019 Global Crisis Survey, nearly 40% of respondents ranked communicating with external stakeholders among their top three areas of vulnerability. Stakeholder mapping and engagement provides a framework to identify your stakeholder population, assess their impact and influence, and create opportunities to engage with them before or during a crisis. The result is a forward-thinking, unified approach that can turn stakeholders into allies.
An outside perspective to poke holes in the right places can be a valuable asset. Our crisis strategy and scenario planning approach involves working with you to hypothesise potential outcomes, to draft approaches to mitigate their impacts, and to help you emerge confidently prepared to address any curveball that might come your way. The framework allows you to respond to immediate needs while looking ahead to mitigate possible strategy-derailing events.
When an organisation faces a challenging situation, it can be tough to step back and take a holistic view while also putting out constant fires. Strategic crisis coordination instills project management with the adaptability required to address a complex crisis. Our approach establishes clear governance, aligned workstreams, and data-driven analysis, combined with a strategic view of risks and opportunities that may be around the corner.
Crisis can be a catalyst to drive strategic transformation, but success depends on an effective and coordinated response. You must respond to a burning fire while you continue to run the business, and simultaneously plan ahead for other unanticipated disruptors. The ability to manage a crisis through these discrete lenses takes practice. Having support to guide you through potential scenarios can be a meaningful way to put out the fire — and to seize opportunity. Our strategic approach to crisis response draws on decades of experience at the forefront of some of the most highly publicised corporate crises. We know what works, and we’ll apply that knowledge to your organisation’s circumstances and help you emerge stronger.
Withstand disruption, sustain core business functions, respond effectively, reduce impact
Disruption is inevitable. What matters is an organisation's ability to emerge stronger from crisis, fueled by an enterprise-wide foundation of business resilience. We measure that ability in four fundamental pillars:
A mature organisation is able to maintain a state of informed preparedness, continue essential mission critical functions despite a disruption or outage, execute response procedures to the extent possible during a disruption, and leverage knowledge from previous disruptions to enhance business resilience processes.
To help your organisation get there, PwC's approach involves a holistic strategy that applies several core resilience competencies:
Organisations that have experienced a crisis understand that no matter how they responded, there’s always room for improvement. Performing an after action review is a meaningful exercise — for your team and for your stakeholders, who will recognise your emphasis on continuous learning.
The review yields insights that enable your team to identify and prioritise actionable enhancements.
And depending on the nature of the crisis, ‘real-time’ or ‘in-flight’ reviews can also be beneficial, particularly if you’re dealing with a long-term situation that requires course-correction along the way.
A crisis can be catastrophic to your business — or it can reveal the strength, quality, and resilience of your organisation. Critically, the time to manage a crisis is before it hits. But if you've never weathered the chaos of a serious disruption, how do you prepare? In the thick of your response, how do you know your strategy is working effectively? And how can you be confident in your ability to turn crisis into opportunity?
That's where working with a global leader in crisis management makes all the difference.
Experience: Bringing ours — and enhancing yours
From corporate scandals to cyber breaches to pandemics, we bring enormous breadth and depth of experience to help clients prepare for and respond to crises. Our team of specialists across the globe knows what works, and we refine our approach continuously to meet the needs of your business and the changing nature of crisis. We apply that battle-tested experience to strengthen your response and help you emerge stronger.
Coordination and operations: Crisis planning is more than messaging
Seamless coordination and efficient operations are the factors that drive success — for your crisis response, and for your ability to run your business throughout the crisis. Our solutions help you focus on the critical elements of coordination and operations, enabling you to prepare and respond in a holistic manner grounded in facts.
A data-driven, technology-enabled approach to crisis
Our innovative tools can help you identify blind spots that could obscure a wider perspective and hamper your response. And our tools can act as a vital early-warning system — in the crucial first minutes of a crisis when quick action could forestall long-lasting consequences. These tools will help to reveal gaps in your preparation and response, and potentially turn unwelcome surprises into strategic opportunities.
A holistic crisis program based on crisis-tested methodologies
The adaptable framework of our holistic crisis management program means you can scale it to any type of incident. We deploy innovative, tested methodologies, drawn from our experience and enriched by data on crisis-management scenarios. With PwC, you’ll be able to anticipate and respond to the challenges and opportunities of unexpected events — and emerge stronger.
