Business continuity planning is inherently cross-functional with a necessity to address risks to an organization’s product and service offerings, as well as the resources necessary to meet obligations. As organizations increasingly rely on a global network of suppliers and service providers, business continuity practitioners have the responsibility to understand and analyze these relationships and lead strategy identification efforts to protect their organization when faced with a third-party disruption.

Developing and implementing business continuity strategies and risk treatment options related to third parties can be difficult because strategies may seemingly contradict an organization’s strategic efforts to leverage single-source suppliers, make supply chains ‘lean’, and reduce stored inventory levels. However, business continuity practitioners must provide top management with the information needed to balance strategic initiatives with the need to reduce single points of failure and protect an organization should a resource become unavailable.

In this article Dustin Mackie discusses the tools available to identify and document third-party resources and methods by which risks can be presented to top management for review and action.

Many organizations today aim to make operations as lean as possible. But, in doing so, are these organizations unknowingly increasing the risk of operational downtime and excess cost? Due to streamlining operations and eliminating redundant activities or suppliers, one misstep or disruption (either internally or externally), can result in time-consuming and costly operational delays, or much worse, impact market positioning or even threaten the survival of the organization.

This article by Jake Hay is part two of a supply chain risk management-focused series called ‘Risky business’. In part one, ‘Managing third-party and supplier risk’, we discussed the importance of protecting your organization from risks associated with a dependence on suppliers (and service providers), as well as how to analyze potential impacts and prioritize these risks.

In this article we’ll discuss the specific business continuity strategies and risk treatment options available to mitigate the risk associated with supplier dependencies to an acceptable level.