Operational Resilience – Review

In our recent round of Zoom and Team conversations with South West business leaders, we found that the Covid-19 virus pandemic has dramatically impacted all aspects of product and service demand, exposing weaknesses in supply chains, limits in IT infrastructure, availability of staff and scramble to participate in the surge in inline sales.

There are some remarkable examples of businesses who have been able to adapt and are rapidly scaling their business by bringing forward plans for new products and services. Alongside entrepreneurial endeavour and organisational response (traditionally referred to as “blood, sweat and tears”) the buzz-phrase “Operational Resilience” has re-emerged as a key component of how successful businesses are protecting their core proposition and conserving cash during the pandemic.

At Chalk + Ward we define operational resilience as the ability of a business to identify, prevent, adapt, respond, recover and learn from operational stress or disruption. We recognised that as businesses plan to return to work, there is a need to learn from this crisis, adapt and redesign existing operations and establish crisis plans that go beyond traditional business continuity or disaster recovery preparation.

Our broad sector insights and consulting experience enables us to best support business leaders and their executive teams by focusing on 3 critical themes.

Accelerate Operational Performance

  • Reappraise & Integrate all existing assets
  • Evaluate supply chain integrity & security – “take control”
  • Revisit “make-buy” decisions against inventory & customer proximity

Enable End to End Digitisation

  • Integration must be driven by the customer experience
  • Mapping & redesign of processes to eliminate “bottlenecks”
  • Connect the entire value chain to create competitive advantage

Establish Asset & Operating Cost Transparency

  • Utilise automated data analysis tools to make fact-based decisions
  • Predict product life cycle values & assortment KPIs to manage cash
  • Optimise manufacturing, warehouse & logistics models

Chard + Ward provides insight to directly support businesses to adapt their operational functions and create long-term competitive advantage. Our ability to provide customer insights, integrated brand marketing, operational consultancy and incisive commercially minded expertise makes us unique in the South West. If you are ready to be challenged and want to learn more get in touch today.

Peter Brennan

Performance and Logistics Consultant

Peter brings a wealth of entrepreneurial and practical experience in improving SME manufacturing, supply & distribution and capital equipment businesses. He has significant business development and strategy execution experience together with management of complex B2B distributor networks, improving salesforce effectiveness, transforming operational productivity, leading portfolio strategy planning and determining international market entry plans.

Peter has been involved in M&A negotiations, including synergy assessment, due diligence preparation and post-merger integration and has led a number of transformations and cost reduction programmes. He thrives on aligning vision and strategy with “day to day” tactical plans to secure and support profitable growth.

Peter was previously Group MD of Vapormatic for 16 years a global £50m aftermarket subsidiary of John Deere ($34b) and a member of the WW Leadership group. He is a Mechanical and Production Engineer, with Commercial Law experience and an MBA from the University of Exeter.

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