Ensuring Resilience While Managing Risk

Risk Mitigation, Business
Continuity & Redundancy:

Ensuring Resilience
While Managing Risk

July 2023

In this follow-up to our 2020 article titled “Risk Mitigation, Business Continuity & Redundancy: Operational Through Uncertain Times,” we take a fresh look at the best strategies for managing and mitigating risk in the modern, post-pandemic landscape. While the types of risks haven’t changed fundamentally, they have evolved, and so must the approach to managing risk while ensuring resilience.

KM² Solutions, with almost two decades of experience in nearshore outsourcing, has considered all risk factors to ensure you have maximum uptime no matter what the environment may be and ensure your business is safe. By establishing comprehensive business continuity plans, we can ensure seamless operations in the face of unexpected disruptions, safeguarding against single-point failures and enhancing service reliability.

Many types of risk can adversely impact business operations, and it’s important to note that none are exclusive to a single business, country, or region. Common types of risk can apply anywhere at any time. And outsourcing is the best first step in successful risk mitigation. But when selecting an outsourcing partner, clients must first consider the provider’s preparedness and experience in managing and mitigating these risks.

COMMON TYPES OF RISK:

Now that we’ve identified some of the most common types of risk let’s look at some things clients should consider when choosing an outsourcing partner to ensure that systems and strategies are in place to manage these risks and ensure operational continuity in any eventuality.

Effective Business Continuity Strategies

MULTI-SITE OPERATIONS

As the old idiom goes, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket!” perhaps the first thing to look for in an outsourcing provider is a broad geographic footprint, and take advantage of that by incorporating a second-site presence into your outsourcing strategy. Leveraging a multi-site, multi-geo outsourcing partner that operates on a unified platform offers inherent risk mitigation and, in the case of an exclusively nearshore outsourcing strategy, can also benefit in the case of increased bilingual demand (English/Spanish) and is also effective in identifying and managing compliance risks and quality assurance issues across teams.

MANAGEMENT DIVERSIFICATION

Another critical consideration is management diversification, pivotal in risk mitigation for a multi-site outsourcing provider. By distributing decision-making authority and responsibilities across multiple individuals and locations, this decentralization of power helps reduce the concentration of risk on a single person or team, making the company less vulnerable to the potential pitfalls that may arise at any specific site or within a particular function. This approach enhances the organization’s resilience and ability to navigate unforeseen challenges.

LOCALIZED INFRASTRUCTURE BACKUP

Outsourcing providers rely heavily on uninterrupted access to critical infrastructure, such as power supply, internet connectivity, telecommunications, and data centers, to ensure continuous service delivery to clients. A localized infrastructure backup strategy is essential to mitigate the risks associated with infrastructure failures or disruptions. This involves establishing redundant systems, backup power sources, and alternative connectivity options at each site, ensuring that operations can swiftly transition to these backup systems in case of an outage or technical issue.

ROBUST TECHNOLOGY PLATFORM

In an increasingly complex and risk-prone landscape, having a robust technology platform is crucial in preventing potential cyberattacks and reducing the risk of data breaches. Encryption, access controls, and multi-factor authentication safeguard data from unauthorized access or breaches. It also enables regular backups and disaster recovery mechanisms, ensuring data resilience and minimizing the impact of potential disruptions. A robust technology platform also enables proactive monitoring and alert systems, allowing providers to detect and respond swiftly to security threats, system vulnerabilities, or anomalies.

VIRTUAL DESKTOP ENVIRONMENTS

By centralizing data and applications within a secure, cloud-based data center instead of data residing on individual devices, you reduce the risk of data loss and the chances of confidential information falling into the wrong hands. It also allows strict access controls and user permissions to ensure only authorized personnel can access sensitive data and applications. In addition, virtual desktop environments can centrally manage software updates, security patches, and system configurations, ensuring that all virtual desktops are up-to-date and protected against known vulnerabilities.

WORK-FROM-HOME (WFH)

The work-from-home experiment showed us that it could be successful during crises, such as the pandemic, when rapid deployment of secure WFH solutions was vital in maintaining business continuity. And although becoming slightly contentious, a case can be made that continuing to augment teams on a hybrid strategy can also be a risk mitigator. That said, not all client programs are suited to a WFH strategy, and it has been shown to negatively impact the brick-and-mortar work environment and affect coaching, overall teamwork, and productivity. A successful WFH strategy is to incentivize and reward tenured, top performers with the right and privilege to work-from-home.

The KM² Advantage

KM² Solutions is committed to delivering effective risk management and business continuity processes to secure your business now and for the future. With a multi-site, multi-geo model, the ability to remain operational in the face of unforeseen risk is critical for success. Through deep experience and rich expertise in actively managing and mitigating risk on behalf of its clients, KM² Solutions’ duty of care relies on the above systems and strategies to manage risks and ensure continuity for our clients.

About KM² Solutions

KM² Solutions ( KM2 Solutions ) operates contact centers throughout the Caribbean and Latin America, providing outsourced inbound and outbound customer service contact services for voice, chat, email, and mobile. KM² Solutions provides these services to clients in financial services, multi-unit healthcare, insurance services, travel & hospitality, eCommerce, technology & telecommunications, home services, and other sectors. The company provides clients with a host of solutions, including customer support and care, telesales & retention, claims management & processing, appointment setting & schedule management, loan origination & verifications, back-office processing, and technical support. KM² Solutions maintains PCI DSS compliance, completes a SOC 2 audit annually, and has a Compliance Management System that meets the FDIC standards.

Risk Mitigation, Business
Continuity & Redundancy: