As global supply chain issues create significant vulnerabilities and disruptions to the delivery of goods and services, they provide a stress test for companies’ business continuity management strategies.

One important finding has emerged as leaders continue to navigate their organizations through the disruption of goods and services: Focusing on the most critical aspects of the business have helped companies streamline their approach and prioritize strategically as they seek to build risk resilience.

In a rapidly evolving risk situation, companies that are taking a comprehensive look at understanding and measuring the financial impact of their supply chain disruptions are able to prioritize responses and establish controls to help rectify the threats they face.^[1] That includes defining what is essential to the organization.

Use these to help define and manage essential services:

Conduct a regular analysis to identify mission-critical products or services and the resources required to support them.

As companies grow and evolve their product and service portfolios, they need to conduct this analysis on a regular basis, ideally annually.

They also need to know which people are necessary at every step to manage talent effectively when uncertainty hits.

As companies document the process, they should identify which tasks are well suited to remote work and which aren't.

Determine criticality levels by product or service.

Positioning products and services on a spectrum can help companies determine the best use of resources at any given point in time.

Establish how long a given process or vendor can be down before the disruption has a negative impact on operations, customer service, finances, reputation, and contractual or regulatory compliance.

Contracting with multiple vendors to produce a key product or service will help prevent one vendor's downtime from disrupting the supply chain.

Understand the role of vendors in mission-critical work and ensure that vendors have satisfactory business continuity management strategies and plans.

More companies are requiring master services agreements to incorporate BCM plans to provide accountability when risks strike.

A vendor resiliency analysis can help companies identify the best way to deliver essential products and services.

In practice: How a burger chain defines essential services — and delivers

To illustrate essential services in action, we can look at a hypothetical burger chain. BCM strategies and vendor resiliency analyses come into play when a burger chain focuses on its mission-critical work — getting burgers into the hands of customers. Companies should work with vendors to ensure consistency in quality and safety at every step, including outlining in the master service agreement how vendors should respond to risk — for instance, if a grower experiences a listeria outbreak, the temperature control fails on a truck while in transit, or paper products face a shortage.

A robust BCM plan and backup vendors for key products help keep the supply chain intact — and support the restaurant’s mission. The example below illustrates some of the supply chain, vendor and personnel factors the burger chain could incorporate in its BCM strategy.