Crisis Event Management Solutions See Brisk Growth in a Year of Global Trouble

While the nation and the world struggle to cope with the global COVID-19 pandemic, use of a technology called “critical event management” is on the rise. Critical event management, or CEM, is an integrated, end-to-end process that enables organizations to significantly speed up responses to critical events and improve outcomes by mitigating or eliminating the impact of a threat. Research by Forrester has found that all companies experienced a critical event in the last two years. In fact, the study found that many dealt with multiple incidents. These events might be severe weather, intellectual/physical property theft, IT failure, cyberattacks, negative social media blitzes that can damage a company’s reputation, or a pandemic.

“The costs of inaction or poor preparation, though, remain steep, lost productivity, eroded corporate reputation, supply chain instability, and lower revenue,” according to a blog post on Noggin. “So what, then, are the most effective means of counteracting the critical event threat? All indicators point towards an integrated method of rapid enterprise incident response. And that’s the provenance of critical event management.”

Essentially, it’s a playbook laid down in advance for crisis events. The thought process is that during a crisis, cooler heads may not prevail, and people under pressure might not make the best decisions. By giving them a framework that was crafted carefully and dispassionately, people’s jobs become easier.

“Critical event management practitioners will say that their field offers thought-through measures to ensure effective critical issues and crisis preparation, response, and recovery, and thus borrows generously from techniques in incident management and response, crisis management, business continuity planning, and emergency management,” wrote the Noggin blogger.

There is evidence that the market is taking CEM seriously. Everbridge, Inc. , which offers a software-as-a-service platform for CEM, recently announced a new milestone in its support of business, healthcare and government organizations during an unprecedented year of natural, manmade and digital crises, including the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, Everbridge customers used its platform to send more than five billion communications, a 30 percent increase compared to 3.5 billion communications in 2019.

“Throughout 2020, Everbridge helped thousands of global C-level and government leaders respond to and mitigate record storms, cyberattacks, supply chain, and business disruptions, and more, all during the ‘black swan’ event of our lifetime – a coronavirus pandemic,” said Scott Burnett, SVP of Operations at Everbridge in a statement. “The events of this past year show, more than ever, that organizations benefit from a holistic, automated way to respond to crises of all kinds, so they can maintain revenue-generating activities, while safeguarding employees and business assets. Everbridge continues to lead by example, innovating to make our platform an increasingly powerful resource for our customers.”