Strategic planning key to corporate resilience

ALKESH SHARMA / Emirates Business

Middle East corporate sector needs to overhaul its in-house strategic planning activities and adopt the best practices to float smoothly even during crisis situation. Moreover, a stout strategic planning in place could capably address the recurring resilience concerns among the enterprises.
Survey reports say that over 73 percent of the Middle East enterprises put emphasis upon merging strategic planning with the resilience factor of the core operations.
“Today’s business ecosystem is very competitive and enterprises should always stay ready for surprises in terms of demanding situations and crisis scenarios. Therefore, incorporation of a robust strategic planning becomes very important
for the success of companies,” said Ihsan Haque, Advisor –Risk Management (executive management), Tatweer Petroleum.
“A good strategic plan addresses the resilience concerns upto the utmost level. It is also important to gauge how a company’s resilience is impacted by the organisation’s strategies and business plans,” pointed
out Haque, who was one of the dignitary panelists at the 6th edition of Business Continuity and Emergency Response Forum 2016, which concluded on Tuesday.
This annual gathering attracted prominent business continuity, risk and disaster management experts, from various industries.
“Strategic-planning is one of the most unconventional area that has attracted corporate’s attention in the recent past. Maintaining a dependable strategy is always the key to
success. IT companies are leading
the bandwagon of allocating big budgets towards this direction and they are closely followed by consultancy firms,” Mark Kirsten, an agile coach and consultant, told Emirates Business.
Concluding day of the summit included discussions on topics like: Private sector alliance for disaster
resilient societies, proactive approach for incident response and breach management, changing role of
corporate security – convergence of physical security with IT and managing continuity and resilience during adversity.
The day commenced with the presentation of Ragy Saro, who is the Programme Officer and is representing the Regional Office for Arab States for UNISDR.
He delved upon the important role of the private sector in reducing disaster risk and ensuring sustainable development.
Covering the role of Corporate Security was Gopal Prasad Choudhary, Chief of Security at Tata Steel Limited, who emphasised upon benchmarking & KPIs measurement as vital tools to ensure alignment between corporate and security goals.
The day also highlighted some of the pain areas and achievements within the oil and gas sector. Supported by The Business Continuity Institute (BCI) and The International Institute of Risk and Safety Management (IIRSM), the conference was sponsored by Deloitte & Touche and Fleming was the main organiser.