Tom is a trusted advisor on procurement and third-party management to organizations across the United States. Having worked with over 120 organizations over his 30-year career, he has a unique ability to bring creativity and discipline to finding solutions for even the most complex challenges his clients face.Pre-Pandemic, but post 911, risk prevention and recovery were calculated from the knowledge and experience the country had at the time: from small towns to major cities, from elementary schools to Ivy League Universities, from small businesses to major corporations, Community or Business Continuity Disaster Recovery Plans had already become essential. Children had fire drills, which sadly became potential gunfire drills, to keep children and teachers safe in schools. Universities had warnings and drills to evacuate classroom and dormitory buildings to keep the students and faculty safe from fire or gunfire. We had bomb shelters, tornado shelters, evacuation routes in case of tsunamis, floods or hurricanes.
But we had no shelters from the consequences of the Covid-19 Pandemic. This is why reviewing a Vendor’s Business Continuity Disaster Recovery Plans (BCDRs) is so important at this time. An incomplete or faulty BCDR can be disastrous for any company for several reasons, all of which boil down to one basic cause: Insufficient Preparedness Planning and Training.
Insufficient preparedness planning and training can bring the organization’s operations to a veritable halt. Depending on the magnitude of the disaster, it could either interfere with the Vendor’s business longer than allocated by the BCP/DRP, or through other unimaginable factors, such as the loss of your customer base or organizational data due to an inadequately prepared IT staff.
Vendors should be trained and drilled on the ways and means by which business can and must continue when faced with unexpected natural, economic and logistic catastrophes and/or personnel adversities.
Until now, smaller companies tended to simply run the basic risk assessments related to financial performance or to meet compliance requirements, but very rarely did they look to perform due diligence against their new or existing vendors’ BCDRs. In this new recovering business environment, due diligence in risk analysis and recovery planning is of paramount importance to comprehensively understand and safeguard the vendors against all potential vulnerabilities.
One of the newer factors resulting from the Pandemic is that the remote workplace from home has been not only successful for the continuity of both smaller and larger businesses in the world, but in many cases, it has been more profitable. Part of the risk assessment analysis should not only calculate the risks involved in remote administration and employment, but in the overall economic and financial consequences of this new environment. Although this new atmosphere may be far more profitable for many enterprises, this new environment undoubtedly will have an impact on the future of geopolitical economic climates.
Through our perceptive understanding of this new Post-Pandemic reality, Vendor Centric will continue providing our vendors with the necessary tools to help perform a robust and comprehensive risk assessment with our customary due diligence approach, to help our vendors reach a realistic Business Continuity Disaster Recovery Plan.
Vendor Centric’s goal is the same as yours, to assure your customers that your highly reputed company will remain viable and competent under both the best and even the worst circumstances, as we assist you in creating or improving your comprehensive, profoundly researched and well-developed Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plans.
