No-brainer: Organizations in every industry are impacted by crises and can benefit from an effective critical event management (CEM) platform that helps keep their people, places and property safe.
Oil and gas companies need to be aware of any issues at processing facilities, such as leaks or equipment malfunctions. Manufacturing companies need to foresee potential supply chain disruptions so they can adjust immediately. Technology companies need to prevent cyberattacks and maintain continuity to preserve sensitive data and stakeholder trust. And retail companies need to be alerted to active shooters and natural disasters affecting store locations so they can protect life and property.
A CEM platform can help organizations in any industry rapidly detect and respond to critical events. However, these platforms are not one-size-fits-all. The platform your organization uses should be able to pinpoint relevant threats to your industry and enable your crisis management team to alert the right people so they can take appropriate action.
What is a critical event management platform?
A critical event can be defined as an incident that poses a threat to people, places and property. Potential incidents can include hurricanes, cyberattacks, active shooters, pandemics, power outages and more. Depending on your industry, your team will likely have to prepare for multiple crisis scenarios.
A critical event management platform enables your team to more effectively deal with emergencies through risk intelligence, critical communications and incident management. Modern platforms use the latest technology to monitor emerging threats, understand how they might impact personnel and assets, keep abreast of any changes as the event unfolds, communicate with thousands of globally dispersed stakeholders, form a response plan, take action and analyze the response to improve going forward.
What is the importance of a CEM platform?
Crisis management teams need to know about potential threats as soon as possible. AI-powered risk intelligence alerts these teams to critical events before a crisis makes headlines. This lead time is crucial and can even enable organizations to prevent a threat from becoming a full-blown crisis in the first place.
AI-Powered Risk Intelligence
Prior to the development of modern risk intelligence technology, crisis management teams had to manually analyze all available data. But with the enormous quantity of information available today, manual analysis alone is not enough. Humans are no longer capable of gathering, analyzing and synthesizing data fast enough for crisis response, but with the help of AI, security analysts can work more effectively and have additional time to form a response strategy.
The supercomputing power of artificial intelligence is capable of sifting through massive amounts of data, including local, national and international news; police and government alerts; social media posts; weather service announcements; internet databases and more. They can then filter through the noise to identify events that will impact your business so you can protect your people and safeguard assets.
Critical Communications
Once your team has detected a potential threat, you need to be able to alert all stakeholders so they can take appropriate action. Your CEM platform should allow your organization to send out geo-targeted, multi-language messages via phone, email, SMS, desktop alerts, voice and more. Mass notification capabilities can keep employees and business assets safe, while ensuring business continuity and disaster recovery. Quickly getting the right information to the right people can save lives and preserve property and brand reputation.
For example, if your CEM platform detects an active shooter in or near one of your company buildings, you need to be able to alert all stakeholders to steer clear of the area or evacuate immediately if they are on-site. A steady stream of clear and actionable information before, during and after critical events can help ensure business continuity and speed up disaster recovery.
Incident Management
When a crisis is underway, your team needs a way to manage the incident as effectively as possible. Your critical event management platform should allow your team to seamlessly coordinate a response using secure, interactive instructions that are easy to update and distribute. It should also keep track of every action taken so your team can look back on their response and review the steps taken before, during and after the event. This paper trail enables teams to improve their emergency response going forward.
Does your industry need a critical event management platform?
Every industry can benefit from improved risk intelligence, effective critical communications and advanced incident management, although use cases will differ depending on the organization.
- Government organizations need a platform that can both closely monitor threats to public safety and send out geo-targeted messages directly to the mobile devices of people in the area so they can stay safe.
- Organizations in the healthcare industry need a way to monitor disease outbreaks, alert staff to new safety protocols and locate missing patients.
- Retail companies need a way to alert employees at a specific store if a hurricane or tornado is touching down in the area so they can either stay home or take shelter.
- College campuses need a way to rapidly alert students, faculty, staff and guests if there is an active shooter on the premises so they can avoid the area.
In addition to emergency situations, an effective CEM platform can streamline day-to-day communications across your organization. For example, a mass communication system can be used to fill open shifts, track changes in stock prices and hold routine video conferences with staff around the world.
Because organizations in every industry are vulnerable to risk, odds are your company could benefit from a CEM platform. The real question might be whether your current critical event management platform is up to the task. Make sure your platform harnesses the latest technology and is capable of handling the strain of any emergency situation, and select a vendor that has plenty of experience working with other companies in your industry.
Discover how critical event management can bring order to chaos.
An incident left unmanaged can easily develop into a full-blown crisis. Visit our CEM resource center to learn more about how to best manage critical events.
