CRISIS AND RECOVERY SERVICES
WHO WE ARE?
Business Cardinal is a member of the Matog Consulting Group with over 20 years’ experience in executing crisis and recovery services nationwide. The world is ever-changing and dynamic. Whether the challenge is internally or externally driven, organizations need to move fast, be flexible and have the right framework to efficiently manage and respond.
The old ways of managing risk are no longer enough. In today’s complex landscape, protecting the people, products, and profits that shape organizations requires creativity in crisis management by looking both inside and outside the discipline of risk for inspiration. The Crisis Management & Recovery professionals at Business Cardinal provide risk executives with innovative solutions needed not just to survive, but to thrive.
We support you to lead your organization with strength and effectiveness by building and implementing a complete crisis response and continuity plan focused on both immediate actions and long-term strategic shifts. Our approach covers all aspects from people and resources, financial planning, product, brand and channel actions, inventory management and operations
Our dedicated crisis management and business continuity planning professionals are there for your business before and after the crisis as well, helping you implement the strategies, policies and procedures that prepare your company for potential interruption and ensure continuity of its business operations
WHAT IS A BUSINESS CRISIS?
A Business crisis is when an unplanned or unexpected problem puts the stability of an entity at risk to the extent that the going concern of the organization is questioned.
These dilemmas can either originate internally or they can be brought on by external influences. The problem affecting the business escalates to the point where it’s out of the company’s control and they can’t resolve it. If left unaddressed, this issue may permanently damage the business or cause it to fail.
3 KEY ELEMENTS FOR ASSESSING A BUSINESS CRISIS
The easiest way to identify a business crisis is to assess the problem for three key elements.
- First, the problem must pose an imminent threat to the organization.
- Next, the situation must involve an element of surprise or shock.
- Finally, due to the severity of the problem as well as its unexpected nature, the situation will place pressure on the business to make timely and effective decisions.
Knowing the elements that make up a business crisis can be instrumental in identifying these problems before it’s too late.
However, sometimes crises are unavoidable, making it imperative that your business has a response ready to handle conflicts. Adopting a crisis management team is a great way for a company to proactively prepare for crises.
These teams like Business Cardinal are in charge of anticipating potential problems and making key decisions to resolve strenuous situations. Successful crisis management teams understand the different types of business crisis and are thoroughly prepared for all situations.
TYPES OF CRISIS
- Financial Crisis
- Personnel Crisis
- Organizational Crisis
- Technological Crisis
- Natural Crisis
- Confrontation Crisis
- Workplace Violence Crisis
- Crisis of Malevolence
Business crisis can manifest in many forms, so your team will need to be prepared to handle a variety of unique situations. Your team should ready a range of responses that are each tailored to address a different type of crisis. To help your team get started, we went ahead and compiled a list of the different types of crisis that any business could face.
- FINANCIAL CRISIS
A financial crisis occurs when a business loses value in its assets and the company can’t afford to pay off its debt. Typically, this is caused by a significant drop in demand for the product or service.
In these cases, the company must move funds around to cover immediate short-term costs. Then, they’ll need to reanalyze their revenue sources to look for new ways to generate long-term income as well as increase their margins.
- PERSONNEL CRISIS
Personnel crises occur when an employee or individual who’s associated with the company is involved in unethical or illegal misconduct.
Whether it’s within the workplace or an employee’s personal life, these situations can result in a serious backlash against the company. Since the organization employed or supported this individual, its lack of judgment is reflected onto the company’s reputation.
In these cases, you’ll need to identify the scope of the situation, determine appropriate disciplinary action, and if necessary, provide a written or verbal statement. It’s important to first fully evaluate the situation and determine how severely the individual violated your company’s values.
- ORGANIZATIONAL CRISIS
Organizational crises are situations where the company has significantly wronged its consumers or employees. Rather than creating mutually beneficial relationships, these businesses use their customers as a means of benefiting the company, or abuse their employees to “save face.”
The three types of organizational crises are:
- Crisis of Deception: This type of crisis occurs when a company knowingly lies about public-facing product information or tampers with public-facing data.
- Crisis of Management Misconduct: This type of crisis is a result of management willingly and knowingly engaging in illegal activities.
- Crisis of Skewed Management Values: This type of crisis results when senior leadership emphasizes short-term financial gains over social responsibility and neglects the interests of stakeholders such as customers and employees.
Examples of misconduct include withholding information, exploiting customers, and misusing managerial powers.
Changing company culture is the best way to address organizational crises because these problems are typically caused by employees who neglect customer needs. Embracing an organizational culture that’s dedicated to customer success can reduce the chances of encountering an internal crisis.
Additionally, you should proceed to hire employees who are closely aligned with your company’s values.
- TECHNOLOGICAL CRISIS
In today’s tech-driven age, businesses heavily rely on technology to perform day-to-day functions. So, when that technology crashes, they have a lot more to worry about than a few missing emails. Ecommerce sites and software companies can lose millions of potential leads if their servers suddenly break. That’s not only a huge loss of potential revenue, but it’s also a major hit to the product or service’s reputation.
The first step to managing these crises is to work with your IT or tech provider to resolve the issue immediately. Your primary concern should be to prevent the issue from affecting any more customers.
Once your software is back online, the next step is to work with your internal resources to determine what happened to your system and set up safeguards to prevent it from occurring again. Boost up your customer service and customer support teams to make sure they’re ready to handle a sudden spike in calls from angry or confused customers.
- NATURAL CRISIS
If an earthquake destroys your office, you might call that a crisis. While it may be rare, natural disasters like hurricanes, earthquakes, and tornados can make a significant impact on your business. If your company is located in an area that’s exposed to extreme weather, you’ll need to prepare an emergency response in the unfortunate event that you’re affected.
The best way to handle natural crises is to be proactive. Build your office in a structure that’s resilient to weather in your area and prepare an evacuation plan in the event of an emergency. It will also help to prepare a contingency plan for business operations in case your offices become unavailable.
An example is the COVID-19 pandemic impacted not only businesses but organizations and families alike. While it took the world by surprise, many businesses built remote work and/or health protocols into their operating model to keep employees and customers as safe as possible.
- CONFRONTATION CRISIS
A confrontation crisis can arise in any number of ways. Your employees may fight. A disagreement may spiral out of control amongst senior leadership. Or, public discontent with your firm can result in a public outcry.
In all cases, the parties involved are looking to get their demands met. This may result in a public boycott
To handle a confrontation crisis, first validate the concerns of those who are confronting you. It’s important to recognize that if they were led to this point, the issue must be significant. Next, review the demands, if any, that the parties have issued. Can you effect change that results in those demands being met? If not, then carefully and tactfully state the reason you can’t.
If the confrontation crisis is happening internally, use conflict resolution skills to defuse the situation before it escalates further.
- WORKPLACE VIOLENCE CRISIS
A workplace violence crisis occurs when a current or former employee commits violence against other employees. Unfortunately, these crises can come on suddenly, and it could be difficult to act before it escalates further or becomes fatal.
The best course of action, especially when de-escalation isn’t possible, is to involve law enforcement as quickly as possible. If an employee was harmed, send the employee immediately to the nearest hospital to get medical help.
- CRISIS OF MALEVOLENCE
A crisis of malevolence occurs when a firm’s opponents use criminal or illegal means to destabilize a firm, harm its reputation, extort it, or even destroy it. Examples include tampering with a company’s product to create large-scale harm, using a company’s products in illegal or unaccepted ways, or hacking into a company’s system to steal encrypted data.
General examples of this type of crisis include cybersecurity threats, hacking, kidnapping, spreading of false rumors, and product sabotage, all with the objective of harming an organization, its stakeholders, and its public image.
When dealing with a crisis of malevolence, first secure your employees’ and customers’ safety — whether by involving law enforcement, patching a cybersecurity risk, or recalling a product that has been tampered with. Next, address the perpetrators, when possible, through legal means.
TYPES OF CRISIS MANAGEMENT
- Responsive Crisis Management
- Proactive Crisis Management
- Recovery Crisis Management
- RESPONSIVE CRISIS MANAGEMENT
When a crisis hits your business, it’s important to have a plan of action ready that matches the situation at hand. Responsive crisis management executes that plan and handles any unexpected roadblocks that may pop up. Responsive crisis management is used for scenarios like financial and personnel crises where it’s imperative that you provide a timely response.
Business Cardinal responds to a responsive crisis management by building a plan that includes communicating with stakeholders, informing employees, and creating adaptive solutions once the crisis has happened.
- PROACTIVE CRISIS MANAGEMENT
Proactive crisis management anticipates a potential crisis and works to prevent it, or prepare for it. While not all crises can be prevented or planned for, actively monitoring for threats to your business can help your company reduce the impact of a potential crisis.
Business Cardinal responds to a proactive crisis management by ensuring there is an earthquake-resistant office and sharing an evacuation plan with employees is one method of proactive crisis management for natural crises.
- RECOVERY CRISIS MANAGEMENT
Sometimes we don’t even see the crisis coming, and it’s too late to prevent the damage it caused. Technological and personnel crises can often blindside a business, causing long-term negative effects. In these cases, your company may not be able to lessen the impact, but you can begin to salvage what’s left of the situation.
Business Cardinal responds to a responsive crisis management by issuing a public apology and conducting research into what caused the unexpected crisis.
WHAT WE DO?
We have worked on 150 of the world’s largest crises over the past 15 years including natural disasters, disease outbreaks, cyberattacks, conduct issues, market disruptions, and operational incidents. We help business and government leaders take immediate control of the crisis situation, stabilize their organizations, and accelerate the recovery.
Our services include:
- CRISIS STABILIZATION AND TURNAROUND
We can help you create financial stability, assess cash flow and improve short-term liquidity in the early stages. We will analyze the causes of under-performance and assess the strategic opportunities if you are in crisis.
- ACCELERATED M&A
We advise and manage transactions associated with the acquisition or disposal of distressed assets or businesses.
- EXIT STRATEGY SERVICES
We implement the sale or closure of underperforming or non-core corporate entities for the best value
- CORPORATE INSOLVENCY
We advise distressed companies, their creditors and other stakeholders in situations where a business can’t be saved or where a formal insolvency process is required.
- ASSET RECOVERY AND TRACING
We identify and recover misappropriated assets, often as part of formal insolvency processes or in support of on-going litigation or fraud investigations.
- OPERATIONAL AND FINANCIAL RESTRUCTURING
We provide specialist restructuring support, including transforming business processes. We also implement new business strategies, divesting non-core businesses and designing new capital structures.
- FINANCIAL MARKETS AND INSURANCE
If you are in the financial or insurance sector, we can help you with restructuring and exit strategies for both solvent and insolvent situations.
- DEBT ADVISORY
Our teams have experience of devising tailored funding solutions as part of a sustainable capital structure in line with your strategic ambitions.
- PENSION SCHEMES SOLVENCY
We can advise corporates and trustees on the solvency of pension schemes.
- FINANCIAL MONITORING FOR REGULATORS
We advise central banks in relation to the solvency of financial institutions. We also work with the European Commission on restructuring plans and state aid.
- END-TO-END BUSINESS STABILIZATION
We have experience and knowledge to identify short and long-term threats to our client’s business during a crisis. We develop immediate no-regret moves as well as long-term contingency plans that increase our clients’ ability to successfully manage the ever-evolving stakeholder expectations.
- PATHWAY ACROSS CRISIS PHASES
We help senior leaders focus on the broad set of required actions for a successful crisis response by leveraging our proprietary frameworks and tools to help guide how they allocate their time during the different phases of a crisis. We help our clients avoid missing key strategic decisions, which can happen when the whole organization is focused on a few urgent, immediate actions.
- BETTER, FASTER DECISION MAKING.
Our teams have helped business and government leaders manage many serious crises. Across every major industry and region, we understand how crises unfold. We are uniquely placed to help clients foresee the impact of their crisis-response decisions, which allows us to help senior leaders make better, faster decisions.
- INTEGRATED, TOP-LEADERSHIP PERSPECTIVE
We provide the strategic judgment, global experience, and integrated point of view required to be true counselors to business heads and government leaders. We help our clients’ senior leaders and boards come together around one central crisis response plan, along the entire crisis life cycle.
- FOCUS ON THE FUTURE
Drawing on our expertise in every major industry, we help our clients find and address the root cause of the crisis and not just the immediate problem. We design transformation programs that build resilience and aim to minimize future risks so clients recover stronger than before. Our support includes rapid design and implementation of new business capabilities and processes which are ranging from claims processing to complex capital repair to climate resilience strategies—to rebuild performance and stakeholder trust.
5 AREAS OUR SERVICES ARE STRUCTURED AROUND
Our services are structured around five areas:
- Risk
We demystify the characteristics of world-class programs including the importance of training, engagement, and choosing the best-fit technologies.
- Program assessments
- Program governance and strategy
- Program implementation and maintenance
- Technology Services
We provide both custom and turn-key technology services to drive program automation, self-service, and data integrity.
- Program Design
From marketing campaigns to program brands, gamification, and ground-breaking activities, our design services elevate the equity of risk programs world-wide. This includes:
- Program branding and marketing
- Program activities
- Training & Learning
We introduce innovative approaches to training and learning that blend cognitive science, military models, storytelling, engagement strategies, and industry standards.
- Executive exercising
- Train-the-trainer
- Hot-topic workshops
- Management
All aspects of a program can be outsourced to BDO, from program governance to business continuity plan development, training, and exercising.
At Business Cardinal, we have the team to maximize value and deliver as we facilitate and implement all aspects of the crisis management plan. Our teams move fast to help clients stabilize crises and deliver an integrated response while maintaining performance.
Key to the value we bring is our deep understanding of how crises unfold. We know what the breakpoints are and act preemptively to protect them by containing problems before they blow up and proactively managing critical stakeholders. We then look to the future, helping clients find and fix the root cause of the crisis or mitigate against future events, and ensure they recover stronger than before.
In times of crisis, organizational leaders need immediate guidance and resources to help them make smart decisions to protect their workforce, operations and finances. Business Cardinal Crisis & Recovery services are designed to help your business respond effectively, recover quickly and return confidently to business as usual.
If you would love to engage us for this service, please call us on 08023200801 or request us to send you a proposal by email to hello@businesscardinal.com or complete our customer enquiry form for more details.